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The economist Scott Shane, in his book “The Illusions of Entrepreneurship,” … says … failed entrepreneurs … violate all kids of established principles of new-business formation. New-business success is clearly correlated with the size of initial capitalization. But failed entrepreneurs tend to be wildly undercapitalized. The data show that organizing as a corporation is best. But failed entrepreneurs tend to organize as sole proprietorships. Writing a business plan is a must; failed entrepreneurs rarely take that step. Taking over an existing business is always the best bet; failed entrepreneurs prefer to start from scratch. Ninety percent of the fastest-growing companies in the country sell to other businesses: failed entrepreneurs usually try sell to consumers, and, rather than serving consumers that other business have missed, they chase the same people as their competitors do. The list goes on: they underemphasize marketing; they don’t understand the importance of financial controls; they try to complete on price.
More here. But don’t worry, you are the exception; none of these rules apply to your business.
Predictable Failures
Maybe you should stop reading Gladwell.
The point is that if there was a strong (presumably) causal connection between P and success, then almost all start ups should adopt P. But they don’t.
If that's what the post said, it would make sense, but it's not. It says "P is correlated with success, but failed businesses tend not to have property P". I still don't see how this could fail to be true.