Not that that's a requirement. Some ideas famously sounded bad (Google had plenty of doubters?). But a lot of these AI and wearable things seem.. silly. I guess I'm getting old.
1) Sound bad
2) But are actually good.
So by selecting on ideas that sound good on first glance, you're already selecting for startups that won't comprise the majority of the success mass.
I think there are plenty of boring, sustainable businesses built on good, logical sounding ideas that have found their niche in the industries they find themselves in.
Large companies also generally push for all their products to work together, limiting their ability to build clean standalone things.
Online dating maybe?
Certainly most big successful tech startups have pretty obvious businesses; they just executed them particularly well or at the right time or with the right connections.
Facebook...people posting their personal info online for everyone to see?
AirBnb...couch-surfing in strangers houses? (One r*** and that idea is dead )
Netflix mailing DVDs to your house?
It's not for all to see, and it was even less for all to see when it started.
> AirBnb...couch-surfing in strangers houses?
That idea didn't really last though; now it's just private landlords.
> Netflix mailing DVDs to your house?
Obvious idea in the era of Blockbuster. I don't think Netflix were the only ones.
It was far from obvious for most people that these were wildly successful ideas before they became popular.
> they just executed them particularly well or at the right time or with the right connections.
I suppose it's blindingly obvious to VCs the bad ideas that are bad vs the bad ideas that are good, which is why they never lose money.
Almost all the money in it comes from milking people who’ve been sold on the idea of launching their own life coaching business, not from people with other careers seeking life coaching.
Whatever tiny legitimate side of that market exists is very-obviously saturated to the tune of a large multiple over what’s sustainable, and it’s pretty clear the real money remaining is in selling people the idea that they too can launch their own coaching business (“be your own boss! You don’t want a boring corporate job forever, do you? That may be fine for some people, I guess, but not for you!”) and have an easy, lucrative career, then charging them money to (supposedly) teach them how (“well of course coaches need coaches, too!”).
And yet, despite all this being pretty damn obvious, lots of people get sucked into the scam-vortex anyway.
Similar things happen all over the place. Starting restaurants without a solid path to success even on paper, et c. Folks deceive themselves really well when dreams get involved.
So, lots of people waste both time and money on clearly-bad business ideas.