Invalidating an idea is a bad idea because old ideas are bad until they’re suddenly very good. For example, before Napoleon, cannons were often a terrible idea: unreliable and rarely decisive. Then the technology caught up to the idea.
Which is why it is good to know why things are bad so you know when they no longer applies. If you just try to be positive then you'd try to use cannons when they were still not good enough to be practical on the field.
> old ideas are bad until they’re suddenly very good
Sure, for an idea to become suddenly very good you either have to rely on technology advancements / innovation, as in the case for cannons that before Napoleon were unreliable and dangerous, or you have to make a controlled bet to test your hypothesis, as in the case of Venture Capital that invests in hundreds of startups (selected according to their investment model) estimating that a small percentage of them will turn out successful.
So my key point is, if an idea becomes very good (i.e. through innovation) it'll be harder to invalidate it, and if you invest in an idea that you aren't comfortable with yet (i.e. venture capital) there'll be a higher risk attached to it.
> as in the case of Venture Capital that invests in hundreds of startups (selected according to their investment model) estimating that a small percentage of them will turn out successful.
This. VCs have an endless supply of disposable entrepreneurs in their portfolio.
For every 1 person that has PG's version of edgy, devil-may-care entrepreneurialism and succeeds, there's 99 that fail. VCs operate more like brokers than entrepreneurs. The only place they're not playing a numbers game is in fostering business connections and hiring.
Acting as if the SV financial Goliath is David is just, I dunno, old. That assembly line has been cranking out the same "apply software to an existing problem" model for a long time now. And they do it because it works, and actually building things takes longer, has less leverage because of up-front capital, and is much higher risk (and taxation).
