Am I on the right track?

This might be a little long for the average reader. But i'll do my best to format it so it's skimmable.

Context
I left my SaaS company 2 months ago.

I was employee number 4 and helped them grow to 8 figures. I had a seat at the executive table and equity in the business. Burnt out and wanted to start my own thing.

I forgot how hard it is to go from 0 👉 1

📚 Two schools of thought

1. Build a product that solves your pain point and find others with that pain point
2. Perform customer discovery calls until you get signal and start building + follow up with them

🥇 First approach
For the last 45 days I built the product I wished I had when leading a 10 person marketing/sales team for the SaaS I was previously at. It checked all the boxes, pulled data, automated specific steps, showed the conversion tracking, data, etc.

I launched it as a beta to my close network and the crowd went MILD. 😒

After some follow up - I realized I built something that already kind of exists and it's hard to convince others (even those who personally know me) that it's different or better.

Undiscouraged, I am going to go back to the drawing board and try approach #2 above and schedule some customer discovery calls.

🥈 Second approach
After trying and failing to turn the marketing numbers around at my last role I am convicted of 4 brutal truths about digital marketing today

Truth #1 – AI-generated content is flooding the internet and ANYONE can and will be creating content with AI.

Truth #2 – Ranking for high-volume keywords is harder than ever and probably not worth it anymore.

Truth #3 – AI-driven efficiency is non-negotiable. If you haven’t installed AI in your business - you are WAY behind.

Truth #4 – Most businesses are thinking about AI completely wrong. Easy button vs quality stair step.

I have some early thoughts on how I would like to solve this (backed by data and some user stories). But my main question and the entire point of this post is....

⁉️ Questions

Before I schedule these product discovery calls should I make it clear where I am convicted and find those who want to talk (agree or disagree) with the above.

Or just keep that out of the mix and ask them my product discovery questions regardless?

I am probably overthinking it - but I just hit up my personal network with a beta launch, feels silly to go back with product discovery questions for them. Is there a good place (besides reddit) to pay people for product discovery calls? A quick Google Search and it's unclear to me.