Excellent essay. I feel like the emphasis on "the story" reinforces pmarca's point in his "product market fit" article (http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee204/Prod

Excellent essay. I feel like the emphasis on "the story" reinforces pmarca's point in his "product market fit" article (http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee204/ProductMarketFit.html http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee204/ProductMarketFit.html): that more important than the team or the idea is the market (in coffeemug's words: the environment). You can obviously screw up a great market -- and that has been done, and not infrequently -- but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most. And neither a stellar team nor a fantastic product will redeem a bad market.