But surely there are success stories which are outliers/anomalies/red herrings, that you really don't want to try and replicate?
To say that every missed opportunity is a failure is like saying that every CA lottery I didn't buy a ticket for was a mistake. That strategy risks over-fitting to successful fluke's, to people who made bad bets that happened to work out. There is enough loose money floating around today that some people out there are going to make bad bets and succeed.
I don't see why you/YC wouldn't focus on bets where you have an unfair advantage over the market and feel fine passing those up where you don't, even if they have some non-zero probability of success.
To say that every missed opportunity is a failure is like saying that every CA lottery I didn't buy a ticket for was a mistake. That strategy risks over-fitting to successful fluke's, to people who made bad bets that happened to work out. There is enough loose money floating around today that some people out there are going to make bad bets and succeed.
I don't see why you/YC wouldn't focus on bets where you have an unfair advantage over the market and feel fine passing those up where you don't, even if they have some non-zero probability of success.