I have the same impression. It looks like you must have a PhD from a top school plus relevant publications on venues like NeurIPS, ICML and others to start competing in this game.
I’m making around $1,500/month of passive income. Here is what it worked for me: I created a web tool for stock technical analysis but instead trying to acquire clients by myself, I contacted some players with a solid distribution channel who lacks some tools to sell. So I offered them white label to sell inside their website, splitting the profits by 50/50. No cost for me to acquire users, sales, marketing or even support. I believe it can work with any kind of product. Pretty much the same as selling your app in a marketplace, but I would say it is easier to sell having a brand on top of it.
I really admire your efforts and optimism around the product. I started something similar 2y ago - not general like yours but a vertical CRM for a specific segment. My value proposition was to create something really simple, clean and start adding relevant features by compiling from my user’s feedback. I end up building a lot of more features than I expected (pipelines, tasks, workflow, email integrations, custom fields, filters, permissions, api, webhooks, reports etc). No matter how your product is, once you position your company as a CRM, the users will always compare you with others 9000 existing similar softwares.
If you are planning to integrate google mail and/or calendar, be prepared to spend 15k to 90k for the third party company security assessment.
I wish you very luck and I hope you can create something meaningful in this space.