> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Of course, there's no telling how much extra baggage you've stored in the word "overconfidence" here, but without overconfident risk takers, there aren't many people left to do the job.
And, although PG is in the Silicon Valley bubble (where only cool things happen, and it's the hub of cool in tech, duh), the advice he has is fairly general. In the board game creator community there's a lot of advice on making things that fail and making things that don't sell "for the fun of making the thing," because let's face it... most of your shit doesn't sell and never has any market value, but that doesn't make it any less useful or instructive.
TL;DR: Being okay with "failure" is a major part of any profession or hobby, and isn't intrinsic to Silicon Valley or VC backed startups...
A population of 10% crazy dreamers is inspiring. A population of 90% crazy dreamers is maybe inspiring in limited doses. Being surrounded by that kind of person, every day, all the time, is tedious and uninspiring. I can see how it's great for investors (who only really care about that 1 success in 100), but for the other 99 people involved, it's enough to make you very cynical.