Any chance they break out of the survivorship bias bubble in their discussions? I largely stopped listening to Acquired because of that. I want more stories about startups that failed while doing seemingly the right thing, and fewer about startups that probably got lucky.
Ironically, this perspective itself is a result of survivorship bias.
There are seemingly so few podcasts and publications about failure stories that it must be a rare and unique idea to start one, right? But the reality is that it's a very common idea. I feature success stories on my podcast (Indie Hackers), and I've been getting requests for "more failure stories" since day #1. I've tried them, and I've also seen a lot of competing websites and podcasts try them. And guess what?
They aren't popular.
It turns out, there's a lot of failure-based content out there. It just never survives or thrives enough to get popular. Hence the survivorship bias illusion that nobody is making failure content.
My theory as to why is simple to understand if you understand basic story structure: Every success story is actually made up of a bunch of small failure stories followed by a small success story: fail-fail-fail-win. People greatly prefer to hear the failure stories of those who eventually succeeded, than to hear the failure stories of those who never did. Not only does it make for a better overall story, but it's more effective to learn from. So I think people are right to prefer this.
I agree that failures are interesting, but the bias problem doesn't go away. Reasons people give for why they failed are no more reliable than reasons they give for why they succeeded (or anything else, for that matter). We're good story-tellers and bad reason-knowers.
I often have this feeling when reading "why my startup failed" blog posts (how do they know?!). Which doesn't mean they aren't worth reading!
Nobody does the right thing. You will not find any startup, future success or failure, that is doing everything the right way. Many times the difference between success and failure is who got lucky and never had to pay for the stuff they skipped over, and who got the predictable consequences.
I was living in North Carolina at the time Gmail came out and remember having so much FOMO when it launched and I didn't have an account. Turns out—no one had an account yet! Love the speed that PB operates with.
mdorazio|3 years ago
csallen|3 years ago
There are seemingly so few podcasts and publications about failure stories that it must be a rare and unique idea to start one, right? But the reality is that it's a very common idea. I feature success stories on my podcast (Indie Hackers), and I've been getting requests for "more failure stories" since day #1. I've tried them, and I've also seen a lot of competing websites and podcasts try them. And guess what?
They aren't popular.
It turns out, there's a lot of failure-based content out there. It just never survives or thrives enough to get popular. Hence the survivorship bias illusion that nobody is making failure content.
My theory as to why is simple to understand if you understand basic story structure: Every success story is actually made up of a bunch of small failure stories followed by a small success story: fail-fail-fail-win. People greatly prefer to hear the failure stories of those who eventually succeeded, than to hear the failure stories of those who never did. Not only does it make for a better overall story, but it's more effective to learn from. So I think people are right to prefer this.
JohnFen|3 years ago
Yes, this!
Success stories are fun and all, but there's not much that can be usefully learned from them. The failures are where the lessons are.
"Make your own mistakes, not someone else's."
dang|3 years ago
I often have this feeling when reading "why my startup failed" blog posts (how do they know?!). Which doesn't mean they aren't worth reading!
michaeladas|3 years ago
whatshisface|3 years ago
peoplenotbots|3 years ago
s1k3|3 years ago
slugiscool99|3 years ago
theGnuMe|3 years ago
tosh|3 years ago
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founders_at_Work
marban|3 years ago
paulgb|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
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rileyphone|3 years ago
seizethecheese|3 years ago
dbtl|3 years ago
As Founders at Work has been mentioned, I will chip in with Coders at Work, which is brilliant and inspired by FaW - it includes many of the OGs of programming: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Progr...
unknown|3 years ago
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breck|3 years ago
I was living in North Carolina at the time Gmail came out and remember having so much FOMO when it launched and I didn't have an account. Turns out—no one had an account yet! Love the speed that PB operates with.