Inverting the Question

One useful tool against survivorship bias is inversion. Instead of asking "Why did the successful ones succeed?", ask "Why did the unsuccessful ones fail?" The second question draws out the invisible data the first one hides.

Charlie Munger made this a hallmark of his thinking. Before investing, he asked not "Why will this work?" but "What could kill this?" The inverted question surfaces risks, base rates, and failure modes that success-focused analysis systematically misses. If you interview only startups that survived, you get a useless picture of what it takes to survive.