You should think about why you're building the software.
If there are other established companies with many customers, you feel their offerings aren't incomplete or have bad UI/UX, and aren't too expensive then be prepared for it to fail as a business. However if you want to do it because you enjoy the work and don't care about making money then go for it. Another thing you think about for making this MVP is to ensure you have proper users otherwise you'll have no "expertise" to evaluate what you built.
It's a lot of work to really understand how people see products, you really have to put an ear to the ground or talk to people.
You might look at something and say "that really sucks" but users are satisfied or vice versa a competitor might look tough to you but customers really hate it and wish they had a choice.
I've been told by VC's and bizdev types that it's a lonely place to have a product that is unlike anything on the market, you might have a hard time proving a market for your product exists. If you have competitors than you know the market exists and it could be better to fight for 1/5 of a large pie than 100% of nothing.
You really do want to build one U.S.P. (unique selling point) into your product, even if it is kinda lame, because you'll have a pat answer for the question of "how is this better than X?"
I guess at first it was because I wanted to fix one particular problem at my company, that they previously had to hire a freelancer for, before having to maintain an in house tool for it.
My thinking was like: my bosses aren't dumb enough to waste thousands of dollars/man hours on something that a 20-100$ monthly subscription could fix, there must be no suitable solution, there is obviously a market for this.
(Turns out they maybe are dumb enough.)
Making money would be one of my goals yeah.
If I make it free I'm sure to have users, starting with my employer. I'm not sure about the numbers of features/hours I'd have to invest to start to reasonably charge people, unless I make it extremelyyyy cheap.
If there are other established companies with many customers, you feel their offerings aren't incomplete or have bad UI/UX, and aren't too expensive then be prepared for it to fail as a business. However if you want to do it because you enjoy the work and don't care about making money then go for it. Another thing you think about for making this MVP is to ensure you have proper users otherwise you'll have no "expertise" to evaluate what you built.