Before seeking major funding, Elysian validated its radical aircraft design with skeptical professors from TU Delft and MIT. Winning over these experts provided the critical credibility and third-party proof needed to build investor confidence in their unproven deep-tech concept.

Established industries often operate like cartels with unwritten rules, such as avoiding aggressive marketing. New entrants gain a significant edge by deliberately violating these norms, forcing incumbents to react to a game they don't want to play. This creates differentiation beyond the core product or service.

Sam Altman famously laughed off the idea that a new venture could compete with OpenAI. Soon after, China's DeepSeek emerged, developing a comparable, and in some cases superior, AI model on a shoestring budget, proving incumbency and capital aren't insurmountable moats.

Creating a new hardware category in a regulated space like aviation requires more than capital; it demands proactive government engagement to write new laws. Archer initiated efforts to establish the regulatory framework for its eVTOL aircraft, demonstrating the necessity of shaping policy for market creation.

Inflammatics initially tried to license its technology but was rejected by major diagnostic firms. The pitch—to build new capabilities and a new platform to displace their own multi-billion dollar microbiology tests—was a classic innovator's dilemma. This refusal by incumbents to disrupt themselves forced the founders to start their own company.

Instead of dismissing harsh criticism, extract the underlying truth. A brutal investor rejection focused Gamma on intertwining product and growth from the very beginning, acknowledging the difficulty of competing against incumbents. This became a foundational part of their strategy.

When competitors like Compaq dismissed Dell as a "mail order company" or "garage operation," Dell viewed it as a powerful advantage. Their underestimation meant they didn't see him coming and failed to properly analyze his disruptive business model, giving him cover to grow.

When Gillette sued Dollar Shave Club, Michael Dubin understood it was more than a patent dispute. He recognized it as a classic incumbent playbook move: use legal battles to drain a startup's resources and make it appear unattractive to potential investors and acquirers. This framing helps founders contextualize and endure such attacks.

Palo Alto Networks pursued cloud cybersecurity when experts claimed no one would trust it. Founder Nir Zook saw this skepticism not as a warning, but as a sign of a wide-open market with a significant competitive moat if they could prove the doubters wrong.