Today is a light news day but I have been meaning to write the story of the Titanic Submersible, which has its own wikipedia page now after the debacle. The tl;dr is that an overconfident entrepreneur built a submersible with a questionable material (carbon fiber) instead of the battle tested titanium that could withstand the deep water pressure. The entrepreneur along with 3 ultra rich paying customers went down in the submersible but the submersible imploded because of the questionable material. The entrepreneur and the passengers all died.
Well, at least the world now knows that carbon fiber doesn’t work in very deep water. This is a very common pattern for startup building. The Titanic Submersible case is a bit extreme in terms of loss but the spirit is similar. Most overconfident entrepreneurs fail miserably but a tiny portion of them will reach the escape velocity to build extraordinary companies. When they fail, some of their investors/supporters could also go down with them tragically. In a parallel universe, the submersible founder could have proven to the world that carbon fiber is a safe and cost effective way for deep water exploration and his risk taking would have been celebrated. Obviously, it didn’t work in this case but as a society we shouldn’t stop overconfident entrepreneurs from trying and putting their own livelihood/lives on the line (although their friends and families should probably talk them out of it). The world will gain knowledge from the successes and from their failures no matter what.