Rage. That’s how it starts.
If you are not angry, you are not paying attention
One thing consciously, intelligently and politically kept under wraps with startups: Rage.
You will listen to podcasts, read articles, mission statements and origin stories. All of them will converge on a single point:
A problem, when solved, will make the world a better place for people.
I believe there are two notions that you never bet against when speculating on the future success of a company:
A better user experience
Never bet against user experience. The market or the “experience” itself, whether it yet exists or not, can and should always be made better when possible. If someone is obsessively working on this, never bet against them.
Apple puts excruciating detail into UX; from the flashlight in the app to the consistency of border radius of macbooks to iphones.
This is also why we went into web3. Web3 gaming offers a better user experience in theory - and if executed well - for gamers overall.
Rage
Now, this is not a recipe for success obviously. It is just a filter that lets you decide in much easier fashion to bet against.
If you come across a founding team who is comfortable with how the world works right now, run away.
The things you should be carefully looking to understand are:
- Are the founders comfortable or borderline wealthy already?
- Do they have contrarian view of how their market/industry works vs how it should work right now?
- Do their egos depend on this startup being successful?
- Are they angry because they are not the one of the, if not the largest company in their field?