Anyone receiving advice should be aware of the prerequisites to that advice.
Humans are imperfect so I'm generally wary of characterizations that talk about perfection, especially when used to explain historical phenomena like success.
One metaphor that I think is far more useful is to think of businesses as having a mistake budget. Only after you have exhausted your allowance of poor decision-making do you enter a life-threatening situation where your next business decision could spell the end, or a second-chance at seeing any kind of success.
Successful businesses are merely more judicious at spending out of their mistake budget, by course-correcting after critical mistakes, compared to their not-so-successful counterparts; rather than saying that successful companies executed perfectly, which is something that is impossible to do in practice.
Most companies that provide a valuable enough product for enough customers to build a decent career for the companies employees are started by average Joe's with no special connections and are executed very poorly.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to start and operate a decent business. The difficult part is growing and scaling that business.
Am I rich?
You have a flaw in your thinking here.
Something is not valuable unless there are customers actually receiving value.
Hence the validity of most "successful people advice" is close to nil.
I could not disagree more. Businesses fall apart all the time, whether they're top tier banks, manufacturing giants, Silicon Valley venture darlings, medium size businesses, mom-and-pops, restaurants, you name it.
Operating a business is a constant balancing act between customers, employees, shareholders, the public, and your own internal vision and desires.
Your premise that "companies that provide a valuable enough product ..." is also incredibly dismissive. Creating any product that provides true value is not easy.
I'll reemphasize that even competent execution is rare; few people can execute perfectly on business AND technology AND marketing AND design AND .... Especially first-time entrepreneurs.
Fortunately, the other guy's deeply imperfect too. In capitalism, you just have to be better than the other guy. It's pretty hard -- the other guy has been at it for a while and you're just starting out, but it's far from impossible. Most businesses execute very poorly.
Fortunately, each time you try to execute, you get a little bit better at all of those, so after a few tries, you can out-execute. You also learn the advantages smaller, more agile players have over bigger ones.
I agree with the persistence bias argument 100%.
* Build products
* Sell products
* Recruit
* Build rapport with customers
* Evaluate business models
Most of that is ability. Few people have ability in /all/ of those directions. I've seen people who are even competent (not great) at all of those launch successful business after successful business.
By "successful" I don't mean billion dollar unicorn. I mean businesses which employ tens (or hundreds) of people, have millions in revenue, and last indefinitely.
This stuff isn't rocket science. If a Fortune 500 make widgets, and you make higher quality widgets at lower cost and make people aware of that, you'll run a sustainable business.
As a small business, on one hand, you'll have slightly less access to distribution and marketing channels. On the other hand, you'll have a much leaner cost model (no multi-layer executive hierarchies to sustain). Your team will also be much more focused, productive, and agile. You'll also be more risk-tolerant. All of those provide competitive advantages.
I've seen $100mm+ companies fail because Google decided not to like them anymore. I'm talking about external forces that are far more powerful than execution. And there are lots of 'em (an infinity, even!).
1. High-risk venture. Someone wants to be the next Facebook and takes a 1-in-a-100 gamble at a billion dollars.
2. Stupid idea/business model. Founder is a true believer in some idea which doesn't match reality.
3. Poor execution. It's a good idea and business model, but any of the hundred things which can shut down a business do: technology takes 10x as long to develop and is buggy; founder fails to recruit good people; zero external sales/visibility/marketing ("if you build it they will come" or wildly implausible assumptions about viral or similar); costs get out-of-control; etc. Most founders I know can do all of those reasonably, and one or two brilliantly. It's hard for me to emphasize how important (and hard) it is to be at least competent at all of those since messing up any one will shut down a company.
Isn't that a tautology? Is there any reliable measure of execution other than the success that follows?