[CryptoFascist]

This! Especially the 'solves a problem or offers a service'. Any company without a viable plan to create surplus is a failure waiting to happen. It's why most startups fail... their purpose is to be a startup first, create a surplus if they luck out, or be flipped into a bubble market.

[timr]

The key word there is "viable plan", and you don't know that you have one until you do it. Many of the biggest, most successful companies are pivots from some lame initial product.

There are plenty of bozos who don't try to solve a problem or offer a service, but there are plenty of dead startups who did all of that and still failed.