You don't have to settle. It's a choice you get to make every day.
Whining isn't a scalable solution.
Don't try to be the 'next'. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.
No, the only way to know what people think is to watch what they do, not what they say. Do they come back for more? Do you cause them to change their behavior? Can you make them smile?
Copy, not from your industry, from others. You have to go where there is no competition.
When you think about Uber and Airbnb and the other companies that are turning things upside down, Uber isn't big 'cause they ran a lot of ads. They're big because someone took out their iPhone and said to their friend, watch this, and pressed a button and a car pulled up.