I'll take an original approach, and I hope you'll like it.

First, to be fully transparent, I'm going to talk about my service, https://getfernand.com (A customer support service focused on being fast and stress-free).
I prefer to share that first rather than lying to you about sneaky plugging my service.

Now, that being said, let's talk about ... Fernand. As you might have guessed, it's not a ground-breaking service. There are already hundreds of competitors out there doing the. Exact. Same. Thing.

So why did we go and build another one. To be honest? It's because of the market. It is:

1. Validated.
2. Big.
3. Complex
4. The big ones aren't getting praise right now.

That's why we decided to go that road. Granted, it requires a crazy amount of work, and the to-do pile doubles every time we remove an item, but still, it's a market so broad that you can't be stuck on the ideas.

But why does it relate to your question? Easy. Nowadays, it's nearly impossible to start something NEW, something that no one else is doing. Seriously, if you go and pitch a VC firm about your new project that you are alone on the market doing ("and that's why we can't evaluate the market for"), they'll think you haven't done your homework correctly. That's all. (and they'll be right.)

So it leaves you with doing something that already exists. Now, for this, you have a few options:

1. Going on a market where there are not many competitors. This can be interesting because you can easily become a leader on this market. But there might not be many competitors for a reason. Pouring your heart and soul onto something that will have a slow growth (if any) to a very limited market is ... well ..., it depends on if it's your heart that is driving.
2. Going against a proven market. This will be harder. Way harder. But you'll have a better chance of growing and getting at least a small fraction of the market. If you can get 0.5% of a billion $ market, it is still 5M$!

That was kind of the reflection we had for Fernand. I manage other services (ImprovMX.com - email forwarding, and PDFShift.io - HTML to PDF conversion API ... another shameless plug ... damn!), and they are both very critical. One hour of downtime feels like an eternity.
So, we sat down with my partner and discussed a service that wouldn't be that critical. We explored different possibilities and decided to land on a Customer support service.

Of course, if you go against a market by providing the exact same product as everyone else, it will be even harder, if not impossible, to stand out. For us, we decided to focus solely on small (1-10) SaaS services with a sensitivity to stress and by offering a clutter-free and very fast product (wow, so much keywords).

To go back to my initial list of 4 points, they were the driving decisions on why to go against the Customer support market:

1. Validated: Because we know that the market is proven. It won't crash tomorrow, and it is only expected to grow over time. Not like NFTs :D
2. Big: So we can hope that if we only get a tiny drop of that market, it will be enough to sustain our lives. We aren't looking to become millionaires, just to be paid building stuff.
3. Complex, so the entry barrier is higher. A big market that you can enter by building something in two days means having a ton of newcomers frequently, which will include, at some point, people reaching out to you asking if you want to acquire them. If the entry-level is high, you'll have more chance to establish yourself for the long run (and in the Customer Support tool, it is; you need an inbox, a knowledge base, and a chat system, AT LEAST).
4. That one's a bonus. Intercom is frequently criticized because of its pricing. So, on top of our USP(s), we also decided that pricing should be simple and straightforward. (we were past users of Intercom, and it is so irritating to have a ton of options with the "upgrade to have this feature" button almost everywhere!). For GetFernand.com, you have all the features for everyone, and only those who can respond pay for their seat, that's all.

Sorry I got a little carried away, but =>

TDLR:

For me, if you want to build a project that will bring beer money (I love beer!), I'd focus on going against big markets and try to make a small dent in them. Find a unique selling point and try to swim between the giant, getting the crumbs and growing from there. You can enter an easy market, but know the competition at the low end (newcomers) will be harder.

Of course this is my point of view.

<3