In spite of that movie from a couple of years back, you typically can't be everywhere, all at once.

There is a myriad excellent investment opportunities out there, but you can't possibly hope to take advantage of all of them... and your best strategy is likely going to be to just pick a few and then stick with them; focusing on them.

Here on Hive, we have literally hundreds of second layer projects we can invest in, and perhaps many of them are actually viable and interesting. But they have a problem.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder whether the exceptionally high failure rate we see is partially due to the false assumption that Hive comes with a "built-in audience."

On the very surface, that might well be a true statement, but the hidden fallacy there is that aforesaid built-in audience has a bottomless vat of available funds to dig into to invest in your project. That's simply not true. They likely have a pretty fixed amount to invest across all options they consider, and that means they are either fully invested already, or they will need to sell something in order to buy something new.

Similarly, I can't help but wonder whether the complacency we often observe is the result of project originators make a determination that it is "not necessary" to recruit participants in their ventures from outside the "fence" that encloses Hive.

I still think back to the meteoric rise of Splinterlands when tens of thousands of new users — who had no previous connection to Hive — found their way to the Hive ecosystem. Had the folks at Splinterlands just sat back and declared "we already have a built in audience here, so that should be enough, I can guarantee you that success would never have happened... regardless of whether or not any of those Splinterlands players ever went on to write a blog post or comment on the main social blogging site.

Regardless, they used the Hive blockchain. They were part of the ecosystem.

While is is certainly nice to see what I would call "social users," they are not the only way to build Hive... and certainly not the only way to stimulate demand for the HIVE token.

Whether it's blogging, or something else, there has to be a compelling reason to acquire and hold HIVE.

On my wanderings through Hive's second layer, I find myself looking for that "compelling reason," as part of detemining whether or not I am going to invest a few of my hard-earned Hive/Dollars into something.

And — in doing so — I have become very aware of the fact that those "compelling reasons" are often few and far between.

Why would anyone invest in something that has no marketing, no real plan, and operates under the assumption that simply "launching" will be enough for success... and then seem to think that their token is the "product," rather than just the vehicle to make some product, service and idea go?

It's hard to fathom, sometimes... but I keep forging on...

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