Survivorship bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

I mean, the other way to look at it is that he's writing about what he knows, or at least about his own experience/perspective?

Better that than trying to write about something he knows nothing about..

p.s. I'm not defending him here, I'm generally not a fan of pg, but I think there's a less narcissistic possibility here. ;)

when people achieve success too early in life they start thinking they're hot stuff

Nope. Counterproof:

http://paulgraham.com/good.html

"When you write something telling people to be good, you seem to be claiming to be good yourself. So I want to say explicitly that I am not a particularly good person. When I was a kid I was firmly in the camp of bad."

Having read and forgotten most of his essays over years, I could recall this in a minute. So probably there's more.

Yeah, and he has the money to prove that he is right.

"There may even be a phenomenon like Dunning-Kruger at work..."

His lack of self awareness is incredibly impressive. I'm almost envious.

Everyone is the hero in their own story.

Don't know where i got it from. I usually use it as a reminder that even evil people like Hitler consider themselves as the good hero. Maybe in difficult circumstances. I don't want to compare PG to Hitler though.

Would you prefer that successful people keep their ideas about how to be successful to themselves? That doesn't seem very equitable ;o