Comment by crazygringo

Not at all.

The most basic way is to do a 30 min interview with 20 designers that cover a few each of freelance, small company, med company, large company. Find out which features they use and don't, and what their pain points are, and whether a tool with less features is something that would be majorly helpful or not very important.

Then do a round of validation with AdWords, can you get designers to click on the ad for something advertised as simpler and bloat-free, go to a landing page that explains what it has and doesn't have, and then put it their email to find out when it launches.

To me, that is the absolute bare minimum to make sure you're developing something that can be a business, rather than just a hobby for yourself.

And these are not my ideas or anything. They're pretty standard stuff, and there's a lot more you can and should do as well.