>It’s the bare minimum before making an investment

Such a naivety. Try visiting r/Wallstreetbets and you'll see that people often don't have any meaningful industry understanding

Are you referring to yourself? Keyword I said was investment. Most of the folks on those types of forums are simply gamblers or wishful thinkers.

Again my only point before you took it to this level was that industry knowledge is not an edge it’s table stakes when making an investment in the public markets. Having that experience or knowledge is not niche or unique and something that can be purchased with a handful of expert interviews.

Industry knowledge is not binary value.

Some have more of it, some less.

The more you have, the more you can evaluate products, roadmaps, competition.

Of course it’s not binary but again, unless it is insider knowledge, the information is simply a commodity that many others are trying to use to make investments. “industry knowledge” is important as an operator but is simply commodity data for an investor.