Everyone is Selling the ‘Next Big Thing’—Here’s How to Tell What Actually Lasts

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“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”
— Warren Buffett

The business world has two types of players: Those who build and those who chase. Only one survives.

Lasting business models aren’t invented.

They’re discovered.

Today’s entrepreneur faces a brutal contradiction.

We have more ways to make money than ever before.

More tools, more platforms, more reach, more access.

And yet, the path has never been more confusing.

When everything is possible, how do you know what’s probable?

Landing pages with polished promises compete for your attention and wallet.

Video testimonials feature beaming customers who found “the way” — always through some specific program or methodology you can purchase right now.

The signal-to-noise ratio has always favored noise.

When anyone can launch a business overnight, which models actually survive?

We need a filtering mechanism that transcends hype cycles.

Enter the Lindy Effect.

The Lindy Effect:

The longer something has survived, the longer it’s likely to last.

The concept originated in 1964 when comedians at Lindy’s Deli in New York City observed jokes surviving the longest tended to persist even longer.

Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot expanded this observation to technology twenty years later.

Then in 2012, Nassim Nicholas Taleb applied it broadly: non-perishable entities — ideas, knowledge systems, business models — follow a fundamental rule.

The longer they’ve already survived, the longer they’re likely to continue surviving.

This creates an incredibly powerful tool for the modern entrepreneur.

The greatest predictor of future survival isn’t innovation, slick marketing, or even market validation.

It’s simply survival itself.

Most “proven formulas” aren’t genuinely proven—they thrived briefly in ideal conditions, then collapsed.

The Lindy Effect reveals what truly stands the test of time.

The 3-Question Survival Lindy-Test

Most businesses don’t fail—they get overrun.

The easiest way to tell if an opportunity is real or a time bomb? Run it through this 3-question survival test:

1. Can Anyone Do This Overnight? (Barriers to Entry)
   If a flood of newcomers can copy your model with zero resistance, profits vanish fast. Real businesses require a moat—a skill, resource, or insight that repels the masses.
2. Does Time Make You Stronger? (Skill Mastery)
   If more experience doesn’t give you a lasting edge, you’re playing a short-term game. True businesses reward years, not months.
3. Who Holds the Power? (Platform Independence)
   If your entire business lives inside someone else’s ecosystem—Amazon, Instagram, you name it—your success is rented, not owned. Would your business survive if that platform vanished tomorrow?

These three questions act like X-ray vision for business models. If an idea fails even one, it’s already on borrowed time.

The Timing Trap: When Success Disappears

The entrepreneurial graveyard is filled with “can’t miss” opportunities that missed.

Consider these once golden eras now turned into cautionary tales:

• Amazon FBA (2015–2020)

Early sellers built genuine wealth with minimal effort.

Then Amazon hiked fees, competition multiplied, and profit margins collapsed.

• Dropshipping (2016–2019)

The formula seemed foolproof: cheap Facebook ads plus AliExpress products equaled passive income.

Then ad costs tripled, shipping delays destroyed customer trust, and thousands of copycats saturated every profitable niche.

• Print-on-Demand (2017–2021)

Creating digital designs that printed on physical products meant zero inventory risk and pure profit.

Now marketplaces overflow with similar designs, profit margins barely cover ad costs, and platforms claim ever-larger revenue shares.

• NFT Trading (2021–2022)

Digital art collections sold for life-changing sums.

The same digital assets sit untouched today, with almost no market for secondary sales.

• Crypto Day Trading (2020–2022)

Amateur traders boasted of 10x returns while professional investors seemed outdated.

Market corrections wiped out entire portfolios overnight.

This pattern extends endlessly through history.

Social media management during COVID lockdowns and domain flipping in the early web—all followed the same trajectory.

These represent classic non-Lindy business models.

Yes, real people made real money.

But their success depended almost entirely on timing, not transferable skill or defensible advantage.

Even Warren Buffett, synonymous with investment wisdom, acknowledges that many of his most profitable decisions contained significant elements of timing and luck.

You can’t predict these windows of opportunity.

But you can avoid gambling your future on obvious failures.

With these foundational Lindy criteria established, let’s examine three unmistakable danger signs signaling non-Lindy businesses to avoid:

Danger Sign #1: Platform Dependency

The most obvious sign of a non-Lindy business: complete dependence on a platform you don’t control.

When your entire business operates within someone else’s ecosystem, you’ve built a branch, not a tree.

• Shopify app developers generated substantial income from 2015-2021. Then, Shopify incorporated competing features directly into their core platform, rendering third-party solutions obsolete.
• SEO-focused businesses dominated online marketing from 2000-2010s. Then Google updates (Panda, Penguin, Core) restructured search rankings, destroying entire agencies in 24 hours.
• Even dropshipping merchants relied entirely on affordable Facebook advertising. When those costs escalated, their business fundamentals collapsed.

The fundamental reality: When your business exists inside another company’s platform, they own your business, not you.

Their policy changes dictate your operations.

Their pricing decisions impact your profitability.

Their existence precedes yours.

Must you avoid all platform-based business models?

Not entirely.

The distinction lies in building portable value that transcends any specific platform.

A Clubhouse presence could develop speaking abilities, audience engagement skills, and relationship-building practices applicable across all audio formats, including podcasts.

An Amazon store might cultivate inventory management systems, customer service protocols, and product development processes valuable in any retail channel.

Ask yourself: If this platform disappeared completely, what would remain of my business?

Expertise? Processes? Customer relationships? Independent assets?

Or merely screenshots of past earnings?

View platform-dependent models with substantial skepticism.

If you choose this path, deliberately cultivate platform-independent capabilities alongside your platform-specific activities.

Your true business value isn’t the platform itself.

It’s what remains valuable when the platform inevitably evolves beyond your control.

Danger Sign #2: Limited Skill Compounding

The second decisive test: Does additional time practicing this business create substantial advantages in terms of your skills?

Ask yourself: Do the core capabilities deepen with experience?

Lindy-compatible businesses reward persistence with compounding expertise. Year ten delivers exponentially more value than year one.

Non-Lindy businesses reach capability plateaus quickly. After mastering fundamentals, additional experience yields diminishing returns.

When expertise compounds over time, each year creates distance between you and potential competitors.

This natural moat protects against market saturation.

• Consider dropshipping as a counterexample. Most practitioners master the essential process within weeks: find products, build store, create ads, fulfill orders. Beyond this initial learning, additional years provide minimal competitive advantage. The core activities remain largely unchanged whether you’ve done it for six months or six years.
• Amazon KDP “Low Content” Books (2020–2023) perfectly illustrates this principle. The model involved creating basic notebooks and journals using simple templates. Initial profits attracted countless creators, but the fundamental capabilities remained elementary. A newcomer with two weeks of practice could produce products virtually identical to someone with years of experience.

The ceiling of possible expertise remains low and easily reached.

The definitive Lindy indicator: When extended experience creates advantages that cannot be replicated through shortcuts.

What are some Lindy business models?

• Professional writing embodies this principle perfectly. Despite AI tools transforming content creation, truly resonant writing demands a deep understanding of human motivation, narrative structure, and cultural context. Skilled writers continue improving for decades, progressively mastering nuance, pacing, and psychological insight. This creates an ever-expanding gap between veterans and newcomers.
• Elite sales professionals demonstrate similar patterns. Top performers accumulate thousands of subtle psychological insights through repeated human interactions. They develop pattern recognition capabilities and emotional intelligence that no manual can teach. Their effectiveness compounds with each conversation, creating expertise that widens over time.

Compare this with operating trend-based food establishments (Bubble Tea, Frozen Yogurt, etc.).

Success depends primarily on location, timing, and basic management—not deepening domain knowledge.

The operator of a five-year-old trendy food concept holds a minimal advantage over a new operator beyond basic operational familiarity.

Lindy businesses don’t demand mastery from day one.

But they do require that each additional year meaningfully differentiates you from those with less experience.

The essential test: If automated tools can replicate your output quality, or a determined newcomer can match your capability within a month, you’re building on a fragile foundation.

Danger Sign #3: Absence of Entry Barriers

The third critical filter: Can anyone immediately replicate what you do?

Durable businesses require legitimate obstacles between wanting to compete and successfully doing so.

When success depends primarily on following a formula or copying a template, market saturation becomes mathematical certainty.

Low friction attracts maximum participation.

Massive competition drives profit margins toward zero.

Only the earliest participants capture meaningful returns.

• The current landscape of AI-generated art sales shows this perfectly. The entire operation consists of:
  • Access to text-to-image generators
  • Copy and paste effective prompts
  • Basic Marketplace listings
  No portfolio development. No technical training. No creative foundation.

When the full recipe for success can be communicated in a sixty-minute tutorial, sustainability becomes impossible.

• “Faceless” YouTube Shorts channels represent the ultimate example of friction-free business models. Their entire operation:
  • AI generates content ideas
  • AI writes scripts
  • AI produces voiceovers
  • Stock footage or AI provides visuals

The unavoidable conclusion: When countless others can duplicate your entire operation with minimal investment, your competitive position has already begun deteriorating.

The more significant the barrier, the more protected your position remains from market saturation.

Businesses with genuine entry friction withstand economic cycles.

Those without it collapse when discovered by the masses.

By applying Lindy principles, you can eliminate 80% of trendy business models from consideration.

This doesn’t mean you should never explore trending opportunities.

Most entrepreneurs will try non-Lindy paths. At least three.

The danger comes when multiple failures drain your resources, energy, and confidence.

Many potential entrepreneurs abandon their dreams entirely after sequential timing-based failures, especially when family responsibilities limit their recovery runway.

This brings us to a powerful concept: Via Negativa. Knowing what to sidestep.

Sometimes, knowing what to avoid is much more valuable than knowing what to pursue.

By recognizing non-Lindy patterns, you gain a sharper filter than any “top 10 business ideas” list could provide.

The first step toward building something lasting is eliminating what won’t.

Red Flags of Non-Lindy Models in Real-World

Let’s translate these principles into practical red flags that signal non-Lindy business models.

These warning signs appear consistently in marketing materials, courses, and opportunity pitches:

• ”With this proven formula, anyone can achieve…”

When success depends entirely on following steps rather than developing judgment, the model will quickly saturate.

• Use of Excessive buzzwords and technical jargon

Non-Lindy models hide behind complex terminology.

Compare: “Buy assets that generate income” (Lindy) vs. “Leverage tokenized fractional ownership in metaverse real estate for passive yield generation” (Non-Lindy)

• ” Our template allows you to create…”

Template-based businesses collapse once the templates spread.

True value rarely comes from filling in blanks.

• ” Anyone with No Experience or Skills…”

When the business actively promotes the absence of skill requirements, it admits to having no protection against market flooding.

• ”Emerging market…”

Truly emerging markets occasionally produce winners.

But 95% of “ground-floor opportunities” represent timing traps rather than sustainable business models.

The most dangerous aspect of non-Lindy opportunities?

They often work brilliantly for early adopters.

This creates genuine testimonials and case studies that attract the next wave of participants—who arrive too late to capture similar returns.

The testimonials aren’t fake.

The results aren’t fabricated.

But they depend on timing windows that close rapidly.

Your entrepreneurial journey requires patience and discernment.

Filter ruthlessly.

Question trends.

Value fundamentals.

Build capabilities that compound.

Create barriers that protect your position.

Reduce platform dependencies.

The world rewards entrepreneurs who commit to building genuine value. Build something that endures, because your dreams deserve longevity.

Your future self will thank you.

Next Steps: Build a Business That Lasts

If you’re curious about avoiding fragile business models and building something durable, you can go deeper:, here are a few more resources that will help you:

• Sharpen your decision-making with the RAFT Framework to systematically learn from failures (Postmortem Ritual: The RAFT Framework).
• Master the art of solving tough business problems with the FLIP Framework (Brainstorming for Solvers).
• Prioritize the right battles instead of chasing distractions (Selective Engagement: Winning Life’s Battles).
• And if you’re feeling overwhelmed by uncertainty, ditch rigid plans and focus on the next actionable step (Next Step Framework).