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Javad's avatar

thanks the articles helps give me a new perspective. it is a bit unconventional advice to tell people to read failure stories too, but makes sense to me. and I love that you have complemented the ideas with results of research too.

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Todd Gagne's avatar

Thanks @Javad. Glad it resonated! I’ve found the failure stories often stick with us longer than the success ones, because they show the patterns to avoid. The research helps remind us that it’s not just anecdotal—it’s repeatable lessons.

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sheo ratan Agarwal's avatar

MR.TODD GAGNE does it again.He enlightens us that—“How studying $1B+ failures can help our startup beat the odds”. He emphasizes that we resist studying failures due to cognitive biases. Survivorship bias leads us to focus on rare successes while overlooking failures. Optimism bias—our tendency to overestimate positive outcomes—distorts our risk assessment. Yet these psychological barriers make studying failure patterns more insightful.

MR.TODD’s each post is worth reading again and again and that’s why I save despite being aware I can access anytime at Substack.

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Todd Gagne's avatar

Thanks @sheo ratan Agarwal. Really appreciate that—thank you for reading so closely and pulling out the key ideas. Those cognitive biases sneak up on all of us, which is why I think we have to keep revisiting them. Glad to know the posts are resonating enough to be worth saving—that means a lot.

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