[throwaway423342]

Off topic, but I always feel PG is both philosophical and dare I say: snake-oily sometimes.

Things like 'A successful startup do X/Y/Z', 'A good founder normally X/Y/Z', and usually X/Y/Z is not that an obvious trait people think that contributes to the success.

He might be right to make the conclusion since he has worked with so many startups and thus has a better classifier than most people, but I can't stop feeling these assertions miss the point and nuances, and is mainly something counter intuitive that he witnesses working as VC. It might be an overfitting issue.

His essays though are usually a good read, lots of times calling out an idea that people sort of experience internally but fail to concretize. He is very good at writing digestible essays.