It's far safer to make a product for a market that you know exists, rather than build a product and try to find a market. You differentiate yourself by providing more value than your competitors, whether it's a novel feature, better service, etc. There is obviously an element of risk/reward - if you go for a potentially unknown market, e.g. you have a cool idea and think people will buy it, then you could make a much better return as the only player. Or you find out that there's no market and you crash and burn.
"if you go for a potentially unknown market, e.g. you have a cool idea and think people will buy it, then you could make a much better return as the only player"
But not necessarily for long. If others see that there's money to be made in that market, you'll soon have competitors, some of which may be much bigger companies that have a lot more resources than you have. Being first to market doesn't assure that you'll dominate the market forever.
It's good news most of the time because you already know the market exists, you can see what the competitor is doing good or bad and learn fast from it.
Windows, Google Search engine, Facebook did not create a new market they built something better than the incumbents.
> Good news: You want to create something for a market that already exists. Good.
Is this good news? I was under the assumption that, unless you were creating something didn't already exist, it wasn't worth the time?