[achow]

Yes, but also..

There are just not enough such writings to balance out the (mega) success stories which are obvious result of survivorship bias.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Perhaps, but this is true for just about any endeavor where there are a teeny amount of winners and legions of unreported failures.

I mean, the Olympics are on, and I love it when they interview a gold medalist or their family and they say "this makes all the sacrifice worth it." I always then think of the literally multiple thousands of non-gold medalists who tried just as hard and sacrificed just as much and think "well, that must suck."

Same thing goes for Hollywood actors, you only hear about the stars who were barely making a living before their big break, not the other thousands who were barely making a living and never got a big break so they ended up doing porn on drugs.

[notpachet]

I bet one could get some good traffic on a blog or podcast focused on interviewing the other Olympic contenders who didn't place, to hear their stories. Those people would likely appreciate being able to tell them. I'd definitely subscribe.

As a recent case in point, it was a fluke that Anna Kiesenhofer won for women's cycling. If she hadn't, few of us would likely have heard about her, which would have been a shame because her background is quite interesting. I imagine there are many other competitors like her. (Well, maybe not exactly like her.)

[justicezyx]

Really, if one cannot figure out the lack of aithenticy in most of such success stories, I think they figure out quickly when they jump into the cold water of running a start-up.

It's not that the success stories have any convincing ideas for any aspiring founders anyway.