I am done. I give up

What is VRINE may be proprietary technology (ideally patented), key strategic partners (e.g. suppliers, distributors, collaborators), or perhaps brand if you're first to market. You also need the relevant resources and capabilities (i.e. skills) to be able to make it happen or attract people who can help you.

You should be at the leading edge of a new trend before other people are aware of it so you can become the dominant product ("blue ocean") and become associated with the product category itself. However, this is easier said than done since innovation is often messy, with no clear end point, so agility and learning is key. Also, Apple were consistently second movers, in which case you need a clear differentiator (think Stripe focussing on ease of use, Apple on design, etc.).

You may also want to research value chain reconfiguration. This explains how you can avoid competing head-on in established industries in ways the incumbents just can't respond to rapidly because it cuts against the core of their business model. The classic example is low cost airlines.

These aren't hard and fast rules. But check out the Innovator's Dilemma to see why entrepreneurs will always be needed.

You choose here to focus on the fact that some people have more angles available to them than others. You call them privilege and believe them to be unjust. If you do that too much, you'll defeat yourself and destroy your own agency.

Maybe you're right, maybe they are unjust, I do have opinions on that sort of thing, I also think the best places to indulge those opinions are at the ballot box and at my desk writing checks to nonprofits. I mean I do screw this up and focus my time/energy/attention on them at inappropriate times. But I know it is a screw-up when I do it. No one is serving the greater good by wasting time.

Running a business is always hard and will always be hard, since it's a competitive activity against other humans who are also clever, hard-working and ambitious. Non-hardworking founders need an incredible niche or they will eventually be driven out by competitors who are just as smart but work harder.

Paternal grandad was a civil servant, and they were comfortable, but grandad died when dad was 6. Granny married a drunk and lost everything. Step-grandad beat them. My dad grew up a rebel. His saving grace was a teacher who said: I don't care if you don't come back to school, but promise me one thing: you'll read a book a week.

Mum and dad meet quite young, and have me when mum was still a teen. We're dirt poor, and they borrow a lot of money from maternal grandad, who is a gold miner with 7 kids. He gets my dad a job at the mine. The 80s in South Africa were boom years for gold, and everyone does well. My dad pays maternal grandad back all their debts, and I distinctly remember how our lives changed as a young chap. Not rich by any stretch, but we're not hungry or shoddily dressed. My dad is smart enough to spend money on important things, like getting us a home PC, and paying for skills, like my Karate and scuba diving.

However, in my late teens, things start changing again. Jobs dry up for dad, mum leaves him, he falls into depression. Finances rise and fall as dad gets back into work, and makes a bit of money day trading. I drop out of uni, as we can't pay for it anymore.

He meets a nice new lady, who inherited a piece of land, and they scrape just about enough money and know-how together to start developing the first phase of a four-phase development. But, he gets fucked by the bank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absa_Group_Limited#Mortgage_lo...

Three weeks after my wedding in 2014, he commits suicide. Either severely depressed, or so that the bank can't come after him. He leaves whatever they have left in a secure estate to the grandchildren, and stepmum can live in the house until she dies. The kids (me and sis, and 3 step sisters) inherit nothing.

Me? I was privileged enough to learn programming in school. The gold mines funded the schools well, and in 1990 already (when I was 11/12), our classroom had 20 Commodores in it. That was my saving grace: coding. I could earn good money, and self-fund most of my bad decisions.

(My first startup: we won Startup weekend, then got a £50K grant from Telefonica - all pure luck, and a little bit of tapping into the zeitgeist at the time: polling apps)