There a couple of ways to look at this. Either incompetent people are successful because the barrier to success is quite low; in which case this is encouraging for competent people.
Or incompetent people are successful because the barrier to success is highly arbitrary and only somewhat correlates to competence which is much less encouraging.
Maybe you lose out on funding to a much less competent crew because you were launching a B2B Web-based SaaS product on a month when everyone was crazy about B2C mobile products for example.
> Or incompetent people are successful because the barrier to success is highly arbitrary and only somewhat correlates to competence which is much less encouraging.
I think this is the case, which on the surface can be depressing. But it can also mean that if you can just stick it out longer than most other people do, and plant more seeds, it's only a matter of time until you get lucky.
The question assumes that it's either not feasible or practical to do that. That may or may not be the case, depending on the definition and context of "high-quality".
Or perhaps the seemingly incompetent people really aren't, and you just can't judge them well enough.
I see this happen quite a bit - someone derides company X because they are still using asp or php. What they're missing is that company X's customers don't care a whit what tech is used, they care about the solution. Therefore the company is judged as incompetent but really they're laughing all the way to the bank.
Or incompetent people are successful because the barrier to success is highly arbitrary and only somewhat correlates to competence which is much less encouraging.
Maybe you lose out on funding to a much less competent crew because you were launching a B2B Web-based SaaS product on a month when everyone was crazy about B2C mobile products for example.