I used to think this way but now believe it’s far better to be at a successful startup. (“Any seat on a rocketship”) Yes, every failed startup contains at least one valuable lesson. And the most important lesson from a successful startup is usually just “be at the right place at the right time”. But there’s an infinite number of ways to fail and a much smaller number of ways to win. Being able to pattern match to at least one successful execution is far more valuable than the ability to avoid one out of infinity failure modes.