This is my story as well, more or less. Want to compare notes? Perhaps figuring out what we have in common would help us understand what we're doing wrong.
As someone who is squarely outside the industry of "side project entrepreneurism," it sounds like the problem is obsessing over minor details about the project and never launching it.
The other person literally said they tried like 50 things and you two haven't launched any yet.
I put that in there to make it more or less obvious that perfectionism was one of the reasons I haven't accomplished much yet. The point was to probe deeper and see if there's some other insight, because everyone already knows that perfectionism kills productivity.
At the same time, if you're doing it for a hobby, taking your time until you're happy can be meditative. That's why I'm taking my side project slowly - because I enjoy coding and am using my side project as a form of relaxation.
You have no idea and irregardless of evidence that you have gathered if something will work or not. Based on this, it would be very bad to work on something for a year without knowing or getting frequent feedback (cash sent to your bank account by customers).
So the only way is to treat this like poker. You place several bets over a period of time (max 1 month). This way you launch 12 projects in a year and have a better success chance of hitting something that actually works. You have to place bets until the card is right, then you can go all-in.
