Identifying the biggest solutions

I was reading [[@gates2021How to avoid a climate disaster: the solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need]] and there's a section in which he discusses that when hearing pitches of companies, a threshold to continue the conversation is how big the solution is. This happens in the context of climate change and reducing carbon emissions, but the same framework can be applied to any context of pitching a startup.

When doing things that can scale, it is important to have a grasp of how much they can scale. Again, in the context of climate, where resources are scarce, a company trying to tackle around 0.1% of the problem should not be prioritized over one tackling 10% of the problem.

This is relatively easy to do in a context with a very clearly defined metric (tonnes of $CO_2$) but perhaps not so much in other contexts. Especially when dealing with venture capitalists, a metric (although very superficial) can be the total addressable market. It can be a clear proxy for people who understood the context in which they operate, and go for the most impactful solution.