The 50-Years-From-Now Test
Find the next big opportunity by naming what today's normal behaviour will look crude or barbaric to your grandchildren.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 80%
Ahmed describes this as a theme he thinks about: 50 years from now, what will future generations look back at our generation and find crazy? He calibrates by first running it backwards, where the answers are easy: smoking on airplanes, the number of people who died giving birth, people dying just from travelling across the country. Then he pulls the same question forwards and asks what feels a little too normalised today that will read as crude or rude later. His own top answer is health monitoring, that you simply did not know how you were doing, went to the doctor maybe once a year, and had your blood pressure randomly measured, which is the exact gap WHOOP exists to close. On the podcast the hosts run the same test live and generate car accidents, with Sean Puri noting that two cars passing at 80 miles an hour ten feet apart will be his generation's smoking section in restaurants, and eating animals via Puri's vegan wife.
Origin
Ahmed offers it mid-conversation as a recurring thought exercise he uses, and it maps directly onto the thesis behind WHOOP's continuous health monitoring.
Core principles
- 01The biggest opportunities are normalised, not unnoticed.
- 02Calibrate forwards by first running the test backwards on history.
- 03Crude, rude, and barbaric are better filters than inefficient.
- 04The gap is usually between what is measurable and what is actually measured.
- 05If the answer feels obvious in hindsight, that is the signal, not a disqualifier.
How to run it
- 1
Run the test backwards to calibrate
Start with the easy historical versions so you know what the pattern feels like. Ahmed's examples are smoking on airplanes, the number of people who died giving birth, and people dying just from travelling across the country.
Pro tip Notice that none of these felt like scandals at the time; they were simply the norm.
- 2
Extract why each one now looks indefensible
In each case the harm was real and the alternative was technically reachable, but the behaviour was so normalised that nobody framed it as a choice. That combination is the signature you are hunting for.
Watch out Do not settle for things that were merely inconvenient; the test needs genuine unrecognised harm.
- 3
Pull the question forwards to today
Ask what feels a little too normalised today that will seem crude or rude in 50 years, framed as what your grandkids would react to with really, Grandpa? Ahmed's answer is health: you just didn't know how you were doing, and went to the doctor maybe once a year.
Pro tip The hosts generate car accidents and eating animals in under two minutes, so run this as a group exercise.
- 4
Filter for gaps technology can actually close
Keep only the candidates where a realistic decade of technology closes the gap. Ahmed pairs his health answer with the specific stack of body scans, blood work, and continuous non-invasive monitoring, plus AI reading complex scans that would otherwise need an expensive radiologist.
Watch out A moral objection with no technical path is a critique, not an opportunity.
- 5
Build against the surviving candidate
Turn the surviving answer into a product thesis and accept that it will look obvious later. Ahmed calls this category obvious innovation that's coming, which is what a correct answer to this test is supposed to feel like.
Pro tip Being early to something later called obvious is the entire payoff of the exercise.
In the wild
Applying the test to his own field, Ahmed lands on health monitoring as the most obvious candidate: people go to the doctor maybe once a year, get their blood pressure randomly measured, and otherwise have no idea how they are doing. He describes future generations reacting with disbelief that people just rolled the dice on their entire health.
→ That answer is the founding thesis of WHOOP, a company Ahmed built to a $3.6 billion valuation on the bet that continuous monitoring replaces the annual checkup.
Puri runs the test live and picks car accidents, describing driving on a one-lane road at night while a truck passed at 80 miles an hour and shook his car. He frames two cars passing ten feet apart in opposite directions at that speed as being one sneeze away from disaster.
→ He concludes it will be our generation's smoking or non-smoking section in restaurants, an arrangement that is unremarkable now and will be incomprehensible in twenty years.
Common mistakes
Only running the test backwards
The historical examples are easy and satisfying, which is the trap. Ahmed's value is entirely in pulling the question forwards, and stopping at the calibration step produces an interesting conversation and zero opportunities.
Rejecting an answer because it seems obvious
Ahmed explicitly files his own answer under obvious innovation that's coming. Dismissing a candidate on the grounds that it is too obvious discards exactly the ideas the test is designed to surface, since correct answers always look obvious in retrospect.
Producing moral critiques with no technical path
Some answers to the test are ethical observations rather than buildable opportunities. Without a realistic technology stack that closes the gap within a decade, you have identified a future regret rather than a company.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and investors looking for durable long-horizon opportunities rather than incremental product ideas.
Not ideal for
Teams that need a shippable feature this quarter, since the outputs are decade-scale bets.
From the transcript
“a theme that I think about is like okay 50 years from now what are things that the future generations look back at our generation…”
“if you try to pull it forwards what would they say about things that feel sort of a little too normalized today”
“I think the health monitoring is an obvious one it's like you just didn't know how you were doing... you go to the doctor once…”
From the episode
WHOOP Founder Will Ahmed: How I Built A $3.6 BILLION Company
WHOOP Founder Will Ahmed