[baddox]

Finding a spouse or long-term romantic partner certainly seems like an apt analogy, but I wonder if the analogy really holds for any specifics beyond the empirical observation that a significant percentage of both marriages and businesses “fail.” I put that in quotation marks, because I’m not convinced that the “success” criteria for either are well-defined. The standard view for marriages seems to be that any marriage that ends before one partner dies was a failure, but I don’t see why a separation or divorce necessarily implies that there wasn’t a net benefit for both partners. Likewise, if a business eventually ceases to exist, I don’t think that necessarily implies that the founders didn’t benefit on net (even if there was no obvious benefit, like a payout). I claim this even though I realize that both “failures” must usually cause considerable pain and/or hardship for all participants for some amount of time.