The infamous Peter Thiel question — the problem with most answers to this question is that people try to think of response for the sake of it whilst missing the true point of the exercise.
I believe the question is aimed at identifying a “secret” about any specific mental model that you can take advantage of because most people don’t know about it yet.
In the context of startups & founders, I believe the most successful startups do not create markets - rather they find innovative ways to serve that market thereby redistributing how value is captured in the favour of their own ventures.
This is our principle belief at Microtraction - We have a market first approach i.e. we focus on the size of the market, the dynamics of the market, the nature of the competition and the timing of market exploitation i.e. why now.
It’s impossible to build a $100m revenue startup at scale in a market that’s worth less than a billion dollars, unless the markets is growing really fast.
Uber didn’t create the “public transportation” market neither did Airbnb create the “travel accommodation” market
In summary most successful startups do not create markets but exploit existing markets early and usually address non-consumption.