My college department head, Marshev Vadim, taught me the importance of researching the history of an industry, including the key players, their assumptions, past failures, and current challenges(btw I strongly recommend his book on the history of management). At App in the Air, I wrote a blog called "Travel 101" and held strategy talks to share what I learned about the industry with my colleagues.

As a side note, I remember pitching a new feature for our app, which would automatically check-in passengers for their flights, to one of Apple's VPs. He surprised me by asking, "Why do airlines have check-in in the first place?" He explained that Apple's philosophy is to try to eliminate problems completely rather than just trying to fix them. It made me realize that without understanding the history of a problem, you won't be able to spot opportunities to remove it altogether.

Obviously, without learning the history of the problem, you won’t spot changing circumstances where the problem could be removed at all.

Balaji Srinivasan, CTO of Coinbase and partner at a16z, also talks about this idea in his “Startup Engineering” MOOC, which he calls an “idea maze”.

A good founder is capable of anticipating which turns lead to treasure and which lead to certain death. A bad founder is just running to the entrance of (say) the “movies/music/filesharing/P2P” maze or the “photosharing” maze without any sense for the history of the industry, the players in the maze, the casualties of the past, and the technologies that are likely to move walls and change assumptions.

TLDR: a good founder learned the industry’s f***g manual

How to RTFM?

• Books - books about the industry's history, such as “Hard Landing” on aviation, textbooks, and startup story books are great sources of such knowledge

• People - having dinner with a travel industry veteran gave me new perspectives on what is happening in the industry and why. Or my friend Peter, who is the founder of a popular online travel agency, who challenges me to constantly ask "why" things work the way they do and to consider alternative solutions. Recently, we discussed why flying is now slower than it was 20 years ago (spoiler: it's due to fuel economy).

• Fundamental education - the story of Boom’s founder, who studied the theory of flight to come up with a startup idea. is an inspiring example.

• Companies - lastly, working for an industry leader can also give you hands-on experience and understanding of the industry’s “default” thinking and the problems that this thinking produces.

Advice to my younger self

1. Don’t forget my Dad’s “RTFM” advice

2. Keep in mind my department head’s “Everything “new” is the “new” combination of “old” in "new” circumstances”

3. Consider the possibility of completely removing a problem rather than just trying to fix it

4. Don’t be afraid to ask “why?” and challenge assumptions