Thanks for sharing your story. There are two components of a business: a product and customers.

You and your friend are probably very good at coding — so that side of the equation is not a problem. Hence, I would recommend you invest more time in getting customers.

You don’t even need to build a product, you can create a mockup (like the one shown in this article. We created a proof of concept in Paint in 2 hours). If you create a few ideas like that, in a few hours, then you can test them online and see if anyone clicks and tries to sign up.

Once you have a couple of interested customers then you can build the product.

I cannot say for sure if you are in the right path or not, I don’t know all the details of your situation and I am not an expert. All I can say is what I would do if I was in someone else’s shoes.

I think, in general, the shorter the cycle between idea and testing the market, the better. Meaning, if you can develop a miniature in a short time and test it, that’s great. I would even avoid coding entirely if possible, and just do the screenshot or some mockup like that. It’s scary, but it’s the lowest risk approach in my opinion because most ideas/products fail, and the sooner you rule out a failing product the less time you have lost.

All else equal, if you are shortening your time to present an idea to the market then that’s definitely a good thing, but I would suggest not getting enmeshed in details and perfectionism before validating the market/product.

It’s great you have new ideas, and I’m sure you’ve learned a lot from your previous experience. Don’t give up and good luck! There are a lot of mistakes we all make when launching new products. I believe as long as we don’t repeat the same mistakes then we are moving forward.