Survivorship Bias
Drawing lessons from only the visible winners while ignoring the (often much larger) hidden population of losers.
Origin
The canonical illustration is the WWII bomber-armor problem. The US Navy looked at planes returning from missions and proposed armoring the spots where they showed the most bullet holes. Statistician Abraham Wald pointed out the opposite: the returning planes weren't getting hit in the engines or cockpit because the ones that were hit there did not return. Reinforce the places with no holes, not the places with holes. The principle generalizes to startup advice (we only hear from founders who succeeded), self-help (we only read books by people who got rich), and dropout culture (we only hear about the dropout billionaires).
Modern usage
Standard tool in startup, investing, and self-help criticism. 'That's survivorship bias' is the reflex pushback on any 'this is what the winners did' article. The bullet-hole-plane diagram is the most-shared survivorship-bias meme online.
In the wild
Half the founder advice you read is survivorship bias.— common usage
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