the best pre-bull winners usually don’t look like winners yet. you’re looking for the things the market hasn’t fully priced in: genuine product-market fit, accelerating usage, strong retention, improving liquidity, credible distribution, meaningful catalysts and a team that can actually execute. price is usually the lagging indicator. the harder part is separating real traction from temporary attention. anyone can manufacture volume for a week. far fewer protocols can keep users, grow activity, generate revenue and expand their distribution while still being early enough for the market to underestimate them. i like thinking about it as a convergence of signals: product → users → activity → revenue → distribution → liquidity → attention → price. when several of those start moving together before price fully reacts, you may be looking at a pre-bull winner. you’ll never catch all of them. you don’t need to. the game is finding enough of them early, sizing the uncertainty appropriately, and letting the winners reveal themselves as the cycle develops. the biggest edge in an early bull market is developing a framework that lets you recognize them before everyone else agrees.