No - I state in the post that you can't know this looking forward. You can take educated guesses based on observed patterns though.
Ships don't float around the ocean randomly. They have captains and crews. If they hit an iceberg, there's usually a good reason for it. In the startup world you can track down and talk with founders, CEOs, and investors and pick their brains to understand why something didn't work.
It's very hard to know if something will succeed looking forward. It's easier to know why something succeed looking backwards. To the people who built the business, it's usually pretty obvious why something failed.
The pattern you see in anomalously successful companies is absolutely one of violating conventional wisdom; By definition these companies are outliers because they are successful. But there's always a reason for it. Picking something that people have an aversion to is a great place to start. Figuring out what has changed about the ecosystem or opportunity that may enable it to succeed today where it had previously failed is the critical question to answer.
Ships don't float around the ocean randomly. They have captains and crews. If they hit an iceberg, there's usually a good reason for it. In the startup world you can track down and talk with founders, CEOs, and investors and pick their brains to understand why something didn't work.
It's very hard to know if something will succeed looking forward. It's easier to know why something succeed looking backwards. To the people who built the business, it's usually pretty obvious why something failed.
The pattern you see in anomalously successful companies is absolutely one of violating conventional wisdom; By definition these companies are outliers because they are successful. But there's always a reason for it. Picking something that people have an aversion to is a great place to start. Figuring out what has changed about the ecosystem or opportunity that may enable it to succeed today where it had previously failed is the critical question to answer.