During a fundamental technology shift like the current AI wave, traditional market size analysis is pointless because new markets and behaviors are being created. Investors should de-emphasize TAM and instead bet on founders who have a clear, convicted vision for how the world will change.

The true measure of a thought leader's impact is not social media engagement but the adoption of their ideas and language by influential figures. When politicians or industry leaders begin to use your specific phrasing or champion your core arguments, it serves as a qualitative but powerful indicator that you are genuinely shaping the broader discourse.

To stay relevant, tech platform companies must obsessively follow developers and startups. They are the primary source of insight into emerging workloads and platform requirements. This isn't just for partnerships, but for fundamental product strategy and learning.

A true investment thesis isn't just a popular idea. It must be a specific, actionable, and testable hypothesis that outlines growth drivers, expected performance, and the conditions for holding or selling the asset.

Information and conversations often originate on Reddit before migrating to platforms like Facebook or Instagram. By actively monitoring relevant subreddits, marketers can get ahead of trends, source new content ideas, and understand nascent conversations in their industry before competitors do, giving them a first-mover advantage.

Analysis shows that the themes venture capitalists and media hype in any given year are significantly delayed. Breakout companies like OpenAI were founded years before their sector became a dominant trend, suggesting that investing in the current "hot" theme is a strategy for being late.

To capitalize on a new technology wave (e.g., AI agents), you must be an active participant at the frontier. The best ideas come from building a solution to a problem you and other pioneers are facing while tinkering. This tool, built for the vanguard, is what the mainstream market will need in 6-12 months.

The vague advice to 'live in the future' becomes practical when you use emerging tech (like AI agents in 2022) to solve your own business problems. By being an early adopter, you encounter the novel challenges that the mass market will face in 1-2 years, revealing the next wave of demand before it's obvious.

LinkedIn's report on 2026 small business trends uses "predictive" and "hopeful" language. This isn't just an analysis of the past; it's a signal to creators about the type of content (like video) and behavior the platform wants to promote, effectively revealing their future algorithm priorities.