How Far Ahead Can You See? A Founder’s Understanding Sets the Ceiling

Depth of industry understanding and the ability to persuade. What future do you see? Can you convince investors to go there with you? Do you have Jobs’s reality distortion field? In VC, you notice an interesting pattern. Many startup projects and products appear to be heading in the same direction and have strong teams. Some quickly obtain investment and develop rapidly; others do not and are eventually eliminated. To a considerable extent, a company’s development speed and ceiling depend on the future its founder can see. Different levels of understanding produce different judgments, substantially affecting market positioning, strategic paths, business-model design, product development, and competitive barriers. At first, teams A and B may seem similar. Even substantial differences may involve offsetting strengths and weaknesses, leaving the companies at similar stages. Yet after a year or two, many companies rapidly pull far apart. I remember an investor saying of Didi’s founder Cheng Wei: among more than twenty companies we reviewed in this industry, he thought most deeply and saw furthest ahead about the future of ride-hailing and mobility, so we invested in him. A similar logic explains why Wang Xing could lead Meituan to victory in China’s battle among a thousand group-buying platforms.