The Success Genome

The map

Cost of failure,
against what they built.

Each dot is one person, placed by cost of failure across the bottom and the size of what they built up the side. Think of it as a picture of where these people ended up, not the odds of ending up there. Everyone on it succeeded. At every level of risk, the ones who didn't make it are missing, because nothing keeps track of them.

<$1M$1–10M$10–100M$100M–1B$1–10B$10B+0246810small outcomes are absent, because fame selects who's here, not methodSOFT LANDING · COST OF FAILURE · NO WAY BACK →OUTCOME MAGNITUDE →
cost of failure0 soft landing → 10 nothing to catch a fall

Read across

Left means a soft landing, where failing cost little. Right means a hard landing, with nothing there to catch them.

Read up

Height is the size of the outcome, from under $1M to $10B and up. Each step is about ten times the one below it.

Read the gaps

The bottom row is empty because these people got here through fame, not through any method. Small outcomes and outright failures never show up.

Read first

Everyone here made it, and that's the catch. Plenty of people started in the same place and didn't, and they don't show up in any dataset. You're only looking at the ones who came out the other side.