[brandonhorst]

> It is almost certain that if someone is smart enough to build a search engine while living off of ramen, they also know more about what Google is capable of.

I'm not sure this is a given. Tons of brilliant developers (myself included) build complex products without having ever considered the market, or just assuming that users will come out of the woodwork if it's technically awesome enough.

Seems to me that if a founder doesn't have immediate answers to some of these "existential questions", that's a red flag right there.

[stathibus]

Yeah the premise is clearly untrue. People build useless stuff all the time. If you're going to build something without having answers to these questions you need to be honest with yourself that you're doing it for fun, and for many that moment will not come unless they are challenged on it.

[titanomachy]

Also the only information you really have in this example is that they're smart enough to say the words "I'm building a search engine".