This a million times. You could further prove your point by bringing up some specific examples:
- Webvan vs Instacart. Prior to Instacart, the conventional wisdom was that grocery delivery doesn't work as a standalone business, and that hypothesis was based on the Webvan data point.
- GM vs Tesla. GM's failure with their EV1 was frequently used against Tesla in their early stages. But GM's decision to abandon their project had nothing to do with market demand, and was instead entirely a politically driven decision.
- Concorde vs Boom. Building a supersonic commercial airliner was assumed to be a futile exercise for over 50 years, despite massive changes in regulations, advancements in technology, and overall market demand.
There are so many more, but these are the ones that instantly came to my mind.
An unrelated point that might be worth making: two of those startups are from YC, and the third one was funded by a guy with $100m burning a hole in his pocket. So while going against conventional wisdom has its merits, it does seem that the funding might turn out to be more difficult than for more conventional startups. I suppose this has to do with many VC funds' focus on certain investment themes, which are used to raise their funds and serves as a de facto contract with the GPs. One only has to look at the funding history of Airbnb - even USV couldn't wrap their head around the concept, and Sequoia bought into the concept but then struggled to match them with one of their existing investment themes (I forgot how they finally did it, but I recall it was a bit of a stretch).
For what its worth, in 07 I had Andy Rachleff as an instructor and we did a case study on Webvan, and Andy's conclusion was that if he had to do it over he'd still invest in Webvan because the business was sound, it was just a bit too early.
There's certainly at least as many opinions about business as there are people working in the private sector, and most are probably wrong, but the fundamental workings of business aren't entirely a random number generator. You can use tools of business to determine the viability of a particular approach, at which point you're left with figuring out the timing and execution of that idea.
- Webvan vs Instacart. Prior to Instacart, the conventional wisdom was that grocery delivery doesn't work as a standalone business, and that hypothesis was based on the Webvan data point.
- GM vs Tesla. GM's failure with their EV1 was frequently used against Tesla in their early stages. But GM's decision to abandon their project had nothing to do with market demand, and was instead entirely a politically driven decision.
- Concorde vs Boom. Building a supersonic commercial airliner was assumed to be a futile exercise for over 50 years, despite massive changes in regulations, advancements in technology, and overall market demand.
There are so many more, but these are the ones that instantly came to my mind.
An unrelated point that might be worth making: two of those startups are from YC, and the third one was funded by a guy with $100m burning a hole in his pocket. So while going against conventional wisdom has its merits, it does seem that the funding might turn out to be more difficult than for more conventional startups. I suppose this has to do with many VC funds' focus on certain investment themes, which are used to raise their funds and serves as a de facto contract with the GPs. One only has to look at the funding history of Airbnb - even USV couldn't wrap their head around the concept, and Sequoia bought into the concept but then struggled to match them with one of their existing investment themes (I forgot how they finally did it, but I recall it was a bit of a stretch).