The most powerful investment structure available to any person is one where the downside is capped and the upside is not. The technical term is asymmetric risk-reward. The practical implication is: look for situations where the worst case is survivable and the best case is transformational.
Most people think about risk in terms of probability. What is the chance this succeeds? This is the wrong variable. The relevant variables are the magnitude of the downside if it fails and the magnitude of the upside if it works. A bet with a thirty percent chance of success can be a good bet if the success case is ten times the failure case. A bet with an eighty percent chance of success can be a bad bet if the success case barely exceeds the failure case.
The structure was asymmetric in the most useful way: the downside was capped and the upside — if the product worked and reached the market — was unbounded. The asymmetry of that structure was part of what made it rational to move fast and commit fully. The worst case was a return to zero from zero.
The structure is available to anyone who looks for it. The question to ask about any significant decision is: what is the worst realistic outcome and can I survive it? If the answer is yes, and the best realistic outcome is meaningfully better than your current position, the bet is probably worth making.
The profound insight is that the most successful builders and investors are not the ones who take the most risk. They are the ones who find situations where the risk structure is asymmetric — where they are risking little to gain much. Finding those situations requires looking, specifically, for the ones other people consider too difficult or too uncertain. The discomfort others feel is what produces the asymmetry.