It'd be nice if there were some sort of 70+% reliable rule of thumb for this. I say this as someone who's made money on both value investing and dogecoin, but who's still anxious when taking on risk in new momentum-y ventures.

There isn't. The only 70+% reliable rule is general personal finance advice: "Dollar cost average" "Diversify" "The broad index of equities goes up by 7% on average annually over your whole life span, do this and you can afford an extra tennis ball on your walker in a few decades when your body fails you"

If some aspect of that sounded less appealing, then you are back to momentum trading and looking for opportunities that distort the market and reality and bet the farm when you make the trade at all. Try to have fun, usually it comes with dopamine.

How depressing that people on HN of all places think of Dogecoin trading before starting a business.

If that is really your perspective, why live in the US?

Correct, you don't need any infrastructure of the US to make money. It offers nothing except a collective culture of growth expectations. But you don't need any aspect of the US to act on it. The variety of growth capital from a wide array of investment firms is only available to a thin sliver of society that has a similar background as the investment firm directors, which would make prioritizing "starting a business" to be a waste of time in comparison to an internationally available opportunity like Dogecoin, an opportunity which only needed to last a few weeks before the market reverts to allocating capital in other things. Be depressed. The rest of us just want to give an answer to the question.