> For almost anything any team can do, you have to assume there will be five other teams, just as good or better, doing the same exact thing.
That may be true for your typical cloud / SaaS / consumer internet / AirBnb for XYZ -kind of startup but there is many many fields in technology where killer teams are exceptionally rare.
Most of these technology fields are not as sexy as building the next Dropbox but very often all the more sophisticated in their core tech. Think about bio-tech, energy, nanotech, lasers, (space) flight, AI, etc. It is never bad for a startup to assume that there is competition and to research it but it is very possible for the right people in a particular field to team up and be the best.
> Think about bio-tech, energy, nanotech, lasers, (space) flight, AI, etc.
I'm not sure. I tend to assume the market is efficient and I found that far more often than not, the assumption proves correct. I don't know very much about most of the fields you mentioned, but think of space flight -- multiple space flight companies were founded around the same time as SpaceX (including John Carmack's now defunct space company, Virgin Galactic, Orbital Sciences, Blue Origin, Planetary Resources, and probably many others I'm missing).
I think that as a rule of thumb, the startup market is much more efficient than it originally seems, even in very deeply technical, capital intensive fields.
I don't think this is true at all which is why you have more startups. Also you can have multiple startups doing the same thing across say different geographies.
That may be true for your typical cloud / SaaS / consumer internet / AirBnb for XYZ -kind of startup but there is many many fields in technology where killer teams are exceptionally rare.
Most of these technology fields are not as sexy as building the next Dropbox but very often all the more sophisticated in their core tech. Think about bio-tech, energy, nanotech, lasers, (space) flight, AI, etc. It is never bad for a startup to assume that there is competition and to research it but it is very possible for the right people in a particular field to team up and be the best.