tl;dr: The answers are often right in front of us.

I recently attended a family wedding in Dallas and, while I was there, one of my cousins-who is just a few years older than I- came up to me and said, “I don’t get NFTs.”

Now, I certainly understand that the concept of NFTs is a challenging one and can be foreign, so I have a lot of patience when it comes to explaining it and I did my best.

As is the way at family events, our conversation was interrupted and we moved on.

About an hour later, another cousin came over to me and said, “you need to go over to that conversation between Jason and Jeff. They are talking about NFTs and Jason is trying to explain it to him.”

So, I migrated over and watched as Jason, a young man in his 20s, was attempting to explain to Jeff, his 50+ year old uncle, why things like TopShot and other NFTs make sense to him (Jason).

At times, you could see a glimmer of understanding and then Jeff’s previous paradigm would come crashing down. It was a good conversation and it was particularly fascinating for me to watch and learn from.

At the end of the conversation, Jason left and Jeff and I were left standing there to chat.

He said, “you know, I’ve seen a lot of these trends come before, but usually I’m too late to the game. I’d like to catch one earlier, but I’m just not sure this one is it.”

“Let me tell you a story,” I said, “about when I was a young salesman in the .com era in 1998, selling ‘the Internet.”

“I often found myself in situations where I was evangelizing the potential of the Internet and I’d run into a 40-something middle manager who- and I’m not joking here- would say something to the effect of ‘oh, that’s a fad.

I’ve seen this movie many times since with the Internet, social media, smartphones, and others.

All I remember from those encounters is that I left them thinking to myself ‘what do I need to do today so that when I’m the middle age guy and some young person comes to me with something new that I don’t dismiss it as a ‘fad?”

That’s been a driving force for me all these years, because I knew SOMETHING was coming, I just didn’t know what.

The point here is that your nephew was literally sitting right in front of you TELLING you that-for him and for his generation-NFTs are a big thing.

That’s literally all you need to know to catch the next wave because by the time your generation “gets it,” it will be too late. Forget about understanding the NFT at its core, look at the trend.

That is-I believe- how you catch the wave.”

I’ve noticed that world-class VCs spend a lot of their time listening to the young start-ups that come in to pitch them. They may not always invest, but they pay attention.

This is one of the reasons, for example, that I willingly and gladly serve as a mentor in the Outlier Ventures Base Camp program.

As one of the premier VC/incubator firms in the crypto space, they see a lot of deal flow and are highly selective in the ones they pick for Base Camp.

All of this puts me in a great position to listen and learn from the younger generation and, hopefully, get an earlier glimpse of the next big thing.

We all have ways to do this.

We just have to want to do it and then set aside our personal beliefs and biases when we do.

That’s how we spot innovation.