When I first got a job writing software for a hedge fund, I was surprised at some of things we paid for. For example, I always thought a list of holidays was free information that you couldn't build a business around. I was wrong. Because trading occurs in so many different markets around the world with individual schedules, it was worth paying good money to get all that information aggregated together in order to know when trading stop. Given the amounts of money being traded, high levels of accuracy and timeliness was a valuable paid product that could compete with all the free info on Google. The lesson has stayed with me ever since that finding the right customers with the right needs can turn a seemingly worthless product into a valuable opportunity.