On the topic of asking people about your idea, I was once having a bit of a problem with this topic. Everyone seemed to "love" what we were busy with, and they'd throw in some suggestions on what else we could do to make our product more suited to their needs. I thought this was great; we're on to something, right?

A little bit later, I relayed these situations to someone who was giving advice on where to take the product / business, and he pointed out that these low-effort supportive comments and "please add feature X" suggestions are ways in which people brush you off in a non-confrontational way. He pointed me to a pretty good book called The Mom Test, which goes through the reasons why this is the case, and also how and what type of questions you should ask. Highly recommended reading, it was eye-opening for me.