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They talk like that because you want them to.

These people are defined by their success. Audiences want to hear about it, often looking for insights. For obvious reasons nobody knows exactly what they did right and thus end up sounding as if in doubt, not least because they don't want to sound pompous.

So when you listen to tech millionaire turned hacker Ben Bitdiddle, unless (A) you insist he talk about his surfboarding experiences or (B) Ben doesn't mind coming through to you as an egomaniac, the observation described here is very much expected.




> nobody knows exactly what they did right

I think pg knows pretty much what he did right, and has explained it to us.


but tell me why failure rate still so high?


Because 'doing it right' means going from a 90% failure rate to a 60% failure rate.


Because the method is explained, but not the exact path. There is a process to follow to help you make something people want, but no way of knowing what people want without trying.


Because building viaweb again, the same way, wouldn't make any money. You have to do something a little different than pg did.




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