While reading Shaan Puri’s Milk Road newsletter, I came across a neat mental model about a common characteristic between important products.
Important products are exits from the traditional, outdated ways of doing things.
Crypto is an exit from the federal reserve, DeFi is an exit from the financial sector, uber is an exit from taxi services, and so on and so forth.
The point is, sometimes its best not to innovate within the current space, but to create an alternative space altogether.
One that could entirely replace the former old space if successful enough.
When a system is so inefficient much like the current financial industry, when many solutions are focused on changing the system from within, we get something like Bitcoin or Ethereum that are threatening to take over the entire thing.
The best businesses and products are exits.
Think about which factors or experiences in your life are hell such as going to DMV.
Instead of building a solution that tries to stink down the DMV, why not create an entirely different solution instead? This one is a little bit difficult because it takes into account the government as well (another system that must be exited from LOL).
The point is most people look for business ideas within an industry.
Instead, try to create entire new industries with a monopoly in mind, rather than a fit-in-the-current-system solution.
This framework works well with Peter Theil’s zero to one idea that you want to build businesses that are going from zero to one, or making entirely new value in the world through technology as opposed to improving on already made solutions (going from 1 to n).