Significantly worse or non-existent

Dan Romero argues that a new product or technology is likely to be adopted when the next best alternative is significantly worse or non-existent, and that this test works well for evaluating startup ideas. He points to Google and Amazon, where pre-existing options were slower, less relevant, or lacked certain information, and cites Peter Thiel's 10x better framework as a rough gauge. In cryptocurrency, he says Bitcoin failed to win mainstream e-commerce because it created new problems for consumers, who already had cards with chargeback protection and rewards, while Uniswap succeeded where 0x had stalled on low liquidity.