I think you inadvertently explained why Tolstoy is right: while there are many categories of failure, within those categories each failure is it’s own big, and

I think you inadvertently explained why Tolstoy is right: while there are many categories of failure, within those categories each failure is it’s own big, and even for the same bug there are often contextual reasons why the bug manifests in one scenario but not another. Yes, there are alcoholics, but every alcoholic has their own lonely story of descent into addiction. There are infinite ways to fail, and only finite ways to succeed. That relative difference between infinite and finite is what Tolstoy is getting at. And this is a helpful perspective, because then success becomes less about trying to prevent infinite failure-points and more about doing a few finite things very well. This is why you see advice from YC like — “don’t worry about competition”, and “talk to users, talk to users, talk to users.”