But why do we feel their advice is more valuable than the inventors and innovators who didn’t make it? What if we could learn more from their failure than from others’ success?
Startup success stories are funny things.
Journalists writing them and audiences cook islands cell phone database reading them always want to know one thing: what’s the secret to success?
Among cliched responses to this question you’ll find such soundbites as “sheer determination”, “working our asses off”, “being perfectionists”, and “never giving up”.
UK Love Island contestant and millionaire influencer Molly Mae caused explosive outrage in the UK with her comments about everyone having “the same 24 hours in the day as Beyonce”.
Actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow is another serial offender. And she may be hardworking. But she was also born to a noted film producer and an award-winning actress.
Gwyneth does have the self awareness to note that some people find this mentality “annoying”. But it’s probably not for the reasons she thinks.
By the very nature of what they do
everyone who tries to “make it”, whether in the arts or in business, is determined and hardworking. If they weren’t, they’d settle for a paid 9-5.
There’s an extremely high likelihood that the 90% of startup founders who fail were just as hardworking as their peers who didn’t. It’s all very well to “work hard” when you have continual access to funding, well-connected parents, a chance meeting with a life-changing investor, or when some arbitrary social media algorithm makes your product go viral.
It’s all very well to “never give up” when you don’t have to.
So when we ask the one successful founder out of 10 for their “secret” instead of the 9 founders who failed, we’re left with serious blind spots. This is known as survivorship bias.