This is not an example of someone following the advice of the smart people and failing. This is someone not following advice and making most of the common mistakes people warn about.

He's a sole founder, working part-time, in Colorado, on a problem he doesn't have, in enterprise software, for schools, with no distribution plan, no team, no domain expertise, in a niche market, and giving up after 1 year.

Of course, he still could have succeeded, but he definitely stacked the deck against himself.