Survivorship Bias: The Tale of Forgotten Failures

According to what I read, all "Company X has been profitable since day 1 and have grown 100% per year for the past decade" are actually what the press made of it, and behind the scenes took years of hard work with lots of setbacks and near death experiences.

Guy Raz's podcast "How I Built This" has been (for the few episodes I've listened to), surprisingly engaging.

I don't consider myself to have an entrepreneurial mindset, and generally don't go for business hagiographies. The Spanx story, of all the damned things to start with, was impressive. With it and Lara Bars, getting into the store was only the start of the battle, and a lot of hustle was required to turn that beginning opportunity into success.

(For all you idea people out there, ideas aren't even nearly enough. And yeah, that pains me to the bone.)

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this

Quote from the article:

> Often, as we revel in stories of start-up founders who struggled their way through on cups of ramen before the tide finally turned on viral product launches, high team performance or strategic partnerships, we forget how many other founders did the same thing, in the same industry and perished…

You're getting the wrong takeaway. It's not that people who made it with few hardships are bad examples, it's that anyone who made it is a bad example.

A lot of successful people, especially in sports, say that because they’re humble. They’ve spent years putting in more work and dedication than others.

Because natural talent alone is not sufficient to be the best at something. It takes time and work. Fans only see the end result, and miss the life dedication to achieving that result. When genetic talent plus insane work ethic collide you get people like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James. Without a work ethic they all may have made it to the NBA, but I doubt we would have known their names. You also have people like Steph Curry, who at least on the surface isn't a genetic freak, but has been practicing basketball since before he could walk.

Knowing he’s ordinary, he’s always trying to improve himself. No one appreciates the agonizing effort he’s had to make. Now that his years of training have yielded such spectacular results, everybody’s talking about his ‘god-given talent.’ That’s how men who don’t try very hard comfort themselves.” -Musashi

Here's one but there are surely others (many entrepreneurship failures examples in this book, although they don't always go into great details): https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-eboo...

I've suggested for years, on this site no less, that people share their failure stories and we could compile them somewhere into a book.

However nobody wants to share them because they are worried that they will be seen...as failures - a reasonable position to take honestly.

The only people that seem to be happy to share failures are currently successful people, and they generally don't have either the time or inclination to wax poetic about their failures.