> be on the cutting-edge of something, but be willing to bail out at the moment its future starts seeming questionable

The problem is this leaves you undifferentiated from every hype chaser in Silicon Valley. Our world is littered with folks who went to coding school, traded Bitcoin, did something in the metaverse and blogged about AI. That jack-of-all-trades knowledge can be useful. But only if you’re making unlikely connections. Having the same cutting-edge familiarity as every tech journalist doesn’t that make.

Better: develop deep knowledge and expertise in something. Anything. Not only does this give you some ability to recognize what expertise looks like from afar, it also lets you dip into new topics and have a chance at seeing something everyone else hasn’t already. That, in turn, gives you the ability to be a meaningful first mover.