What is genius? Here's from my past chess life (I was a 2100+ rated chess player)
What differentiates a super Grandmaster (GM) from a highly ranked International master (IM) ? And what's the analogy in the startup world?

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Most IMs (even the lower-ranked ones) can and do generate the same set of candidate moves almost 99% of the time. They can talk intelligently and discuss pros and cons of each move. This is why they are able to annotate and commentate even Carlsen's or Kasparov's matches.
However, the difference lies in weighting these moves accurately prior to knowing which is the best one. Also, the difference happens only in maybe 4-5 moves in the entire game (where the super GM makes a different move).
But that's the difference between explaining great moves vs making great moves at the right time! We can call this "explaining away" the genius or hindsight.
I think startups are fairly similar. Lots of people are able to explain away the success of every great product/platform. However, when faced with the 1000s of decisions required to get to greatness, a very small number of decisions actually are important.
Unfortunately, we dont know upfront which decisions are key. Therein lie the struggle and the beauty of it all!
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