But equally, anything with that much potential has a high likelihood of failure – if it was obviously a good idea with no risks, everyone would be doing it. Indeed, it’s inherent in really transformative ideas that they look like bad ideas – Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon all did, sometimes several times over. In hindsight the things that worked look like good ideas and the ones that failed look stupid, but sadly it’s not that obvious at the time. Rather, this is how the process of invention and creation works. We try things – we try to create companies, products and ideas, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they change the world. And so, we see, in our world around half such attempts fail completely, and 5% or so go to the moon.

Look for bad ideas. From Benedict Evans