My views on market validation have changed with age. What I've observed after talking to hundreds of founders is that it's now so easy for someone to enter a market that it seems like those that are successful are the ones who managed to _create_ their market. No matter how smart or how good your idea is, many many successful ventures are successful because of some intangible / hard-to-reproduce circumstance that allowed them to create the market. It could be investor /pr momentum, connections, regulatory friction or some other intangible, but whatever it is - it's not something that could be easily reproduced because it's nuanced for every founder and company.