That's absolutely right. Generally speaking though, you need to be popular (a lot of customers) in order to generate significant profits.
Since "making something people want" is generally considered a harder problem than monetizing that service when you have something people want, it's not entirely irrational to focus on the former before the latter, even if it doesn't always pan out.
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One thing I hope we've learned is that popularity does not necessarily equal profitability.
That's absolutely right. Generally speaking though, you need to be popular (a lot of customers) in order to generate significant profits.
Since "making something people want" is generally considered a harder problem than monetizing that service when you have something people want, it's not entirely irrational to focus on the former before the latter, even if it doesn't always pan out.