Idea 1 - The problem of gathering data of a customer (SFDC, Intercom..) - Who: Product manager, Marketer, Sales... ?
Idea 2 - The Problem of management challenges - Who: Green Engineering Managers and CTOs
Being in Slack makes that the two ideas have the same UX / Distribution channel. But those two ideas are radically different.
"how do you know you aren't completely wrong?" => It's the whole point of the article, to derisk at the maximum this. If you can make sure that 1) You're solving a real problem => We are because we have some paying customers and interviewed more than 400 Engineering Managers 2) You're excited about this problem => We are because, as you said, we "burned" people being bad managers 3) It's innovative => We are because we haven't seen any similar product
Then if the 3 are checked, we have at least some chances of learning from our past experience
It seems like you all are burning money + people but still on the same idea but slightly different (Enterprise Slack bot).
How do you know the market is there? Slack for instance went from an MMORPG to a chat client. I am just genuinely curious why you all continue on this path?