> Succeeding as a musician takes determination as well as talent, so this answer works out to be the right advice for everyone. The ones who are uncertain believe it and give up, and the ones who are sufficiently determined think "screw that, I'll succeed anyway."

> So our official policy now is only to fund undergrads we can't talk out of it.

Speculating wildly on something we still haven't been able to figure out...

I was talking with an old colleague, and one of the biggest problems we've heard of in too many startups is founders with little-to-no experience who seem mind-bogglingly, clinically sure of themselves. Even in fields in which they have zero education or experience, even when all the highly-skilled specialists they hired are telling them the opposite. Even when they're told the good employees and customers will leave if they do a stupid thing that they have no business even considering. But why are so many of these people getting funded?

Going back to the article: imagine you're pitching, and startup experts who seem to be on your side are nevertheless trying to talk inexperienced you out of it. You can't make an argument that convinces them to stop trying to talk you out of it. Maybe they know something you don't? Nope, then you're rewarded for irrational confidence in yourself, and perhaps for manipulative fake-it-till-you-make-it behaviors.

Even if this wasn't the nature of the discouragement PG wrote about, given how influential PG's articles seemed early in tech startups, maybe a lot of investors since then have been selecting for, and encouraging, some traits that we've seen destroy more companies than they make?

If that's the case, was that part of some angel/VC formulas all along, to make some percentage of the investments be in narcissists, till you hit a high-functioning one? Or that, plus roll the dice on whether the necessary mitigating/complementary external factors align at random? Maybe that's not a bad strategy, especially when the investment environment is such that you can have an apparently skyrocketing property, and exit rich, before anyone realizes the rocket has deep-seated problems and is going to blow up.

Obviously, personalities like this have existed before tech startups, but maybe not as frequently enabled by professional investors?

Speculating wildly here, but the not-unusual clinically overconfident startup founder (to the point of self-destructive) is a phenomenon we haven't been able to figure out in any satisfying way, and only have guesses.