Yesterday I shared a few takeaways from reading The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. The book does a great job of describing some early-stage venture capital investments that had outsize returns (Cisco, Apple, Google, eBay, Alibaba, Facebook, Uber, etc.). There’s a story behind each of these deals, and the book tells each story in an interesting way and even gives specific financial details on some of these investments.

These deals were all different, but they had one thing in common: the companies were early into new markets that quickly became massive. Most ended up dominating their markets (for better or worse).

Markets matter a lot. They have a material impact on outcomes. Founders should be aware of this and be honest with themselves about the market they’re going after. If you’re solving a problem in a slow-growth or declining market, an already difficult journey will likely be many times harder.