"But in industries with slim margins, you see more cutthroat behavior." Absolutely. Not to mention in business and industries which are being operated by typic

"But in industries with slim margins, you see more cutthroat behavior." Absolutely. Not to mention in business and industries which are being operated by typically older people who have families and are in fear of losing their job or their business or their house (which is often collateral for loans). It's easy to be a relaxed nice guy if you are a tenured University prof with an office of dusty books. Or a startup guy who has multiple plan b's. [1] A bit harder if you've got outstanding accounts receivable as well as aggravating customers and cutthroat competitors. And the type of run of the mill mediocre people that you typically get to work for you if you are not a "startup". [1] And let's just put it right on the table here. Anyone who gets a large amount of funding and fails gets their ticket punched and gets another try either working for another startup or perhaps raising for another idea. And actually the larger the failure (and visibility) it's typically good for the next thing someone will do. Edit: Failure in traditional business is failure. It's a negative plain and simple. You end up working for someone in their lackluster business and since you may have lost some of your assets you can't even typically start a new business (and your friends and family are not going to give you an additional money, nor will you be able to get bank loans..)