> a completely gut feel of: does this sound reasonable, do the numbers look sensible, does the team look good.
That's really the only way you ever could do it. But the key words there are "reasonable" and "sensible". Reasonable and sensible things don't revolutionize the entire world. They're not brand new, unprecedented technologies. It's not sensible to claim you'll create a ten-billion-dollar+ market overnight. It's not reasonable to claim that a problem that 10,000 smart scientists have worked on for decades was just solved in an unexpected way by this twenty-something "wunderkind" upstart and no you can't see behind the curtain. And yet these people get hundreds of millions in investment anyway. That's the question: why the hell did that ever sound reasonable; why the hell did those numbers ever look sensible!?
To me it's a natural consequence of wealth inequality. When you have mega funds like the oil countries have, where even losses like this are not really relevant, you will have this behavior. They know it's a moonshot. It's high risk high reward. And many will fail - but in the end, it doesn't really matter that much.
That's really the only way you ever could do it. But the key words there are "reasonable" and "sensible". Reasonable and sensible things don't revolutionize the entire world. They're not brand new, unprecedented technologies. It's not sensible to claim you'll create a ten-billion-dollar+ market overnight. It's not reasonable to claim that a problem that 10,000 smart scientists have worked on for decades was just solved in an unexpected way by this twenty-something "wunderkind" upstart and no you can't see behind the curtain. And yet these people get hundreds of millions in investment anyway. That's the question: why the hell did that ever sound reasonable; why the hell did those numbers ever look sensible!?