The Inner Monologue

Let’s play a game. Name a wildly successful company—Google, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, whatever. Now, think about why they’re successful.

If you said, “Because they make brilliant decisions all the time!”—congratulations, you’ve fallen for the Survivorship Bias Fairy Tale.

Here’s the truth: Most giant corporations are where they are because of one or two lucky breaks, not because they’re run by infallible business wizards.

• Google? Got lucky with search, then threw money at a thousand other ideas (Google+, Glass, Stadia…) until a few stuck (Gmail, Maps, YouTube—which they bought).
• Apple? Was weeks from bankruptcy before the iPod (which almost failed) and then the iPhone (which was a gamble). Now they sell $1,000 monitor stands and call it innovation.
• Tesla? Survived multiple near-death experiences, propped up by hype, subsidies, and Elon’s ability to convince people that “production hell” is just a minor speed bump.

But here’s the kicker—we only remember their wins.

For every iPhone, there’s a Newton.
For every AWS, there’s a Fire Phone.
For every Tesla Model 3, there’s a Cybertruck production nightmare.

Yet somehow, startups look at these companies and think: “If we just copy their latest management fad, we too can be a trillion-dollar company!”

The Real Secret to Their Success? A War Chest of Failures

Big companies don’t succeed because they’re smarter—they succeed because they can afford to fail. A lot.

• Microsoft spent billions on Windows Phone before finally giving up.
• Amazon lost money for years before AWS bailed them out.
• Meta (Facebook) burned $10B+ on the Metaverse before quietly pretending it never happened.

If your startup tried half of the dumb ideas these companies pursued, you’d be out of business in a month. But they? They just shrug and move on to the next expensive experiment.

The Edison Effect: History Only Remembers the Wins

Thomas Edison is taught in schools as a genius inventor. What they don’t teach you is that he wasted a fortune on the diamond disk phonograph, a failed technology that nearly bankrupted him. But hey, who cares? He also invented the lightbulb (or, more accurately, commercialized it after buying the patents).

This is how corporate mythology works: The failures are erased, the lucky breaks are recast as “visionary genius,” and suddenly every MBA thinks they can replicate success by copying the wrong lessons.

So What Should You Do Instead?

Stop chasing the latest corporate trend. Big companies get away with nonsense because they can. You can’t.

• Don’t implement “Agile” because Google does it (they also have infinite money and engineers).
• Don’t copy Amazon’s “two-pizza teams” (you have 10 employees, not 1.5 million).
• Don’t obsess over “disruption” like Tesla (unless you also enjoy sleeping on the factory floor).

Instead, focus on what actually works for your business.

Because here’s the cold, hard truth: Most giant corporations are just one-trick ponies with a pile of cash to hide their mistakes.

And you? You don’t have that luxury. So stop pretending you do.