> How would Larry Paige or Drew Houston have done research to conclude that they are "better/luckier than everyone else who's approached this"? In a negative s

> How would Larry Paige or Drew Houston have done research to conclude that they are "better/luckier than everyone else who's approached this"? In a negative sense, mostly. If it's absolutely a good idea that you know you have the solution for and it doesn't require a ridiculous amount of capital to execute and said execution is fairly straightforward and a sizeable market exists and etc, etc then the only possible conclusion is that you are legitimately close enough to the first one to solve the problem that you can go ahead. But odds are against this being the case so you should assume that it's not and then figure it out from there rather than assume that it is the case and you have an easy business ahead of you. Anything else would just be a bad investment of your time and resources.