In the beginning there was nothing....

....God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.
Just read the essay by Pual Graham "How to Start a Startup". Inspiring and informative piece, full of profound advices.
Carving out theories behind success and failure of businesses, and to make out predictive pattern out of those, is indeed favourite pastime for some,and for some it is even their livelihood, yet the list of various B-School case studies and theories is never ending. Every now and then, people came up with some new explanations.
3 years back, I had written one of my course TermPaper on the Analogies between biological and business systems. And while doing that, I'd come with the notion that just as the "mutation" in the evolutionary biology cannot be predicted, can only be accounted for, business systems follow the same logic(or non-logic) of evolution.
Now coming back to the essay, it had some solid points, advices, humors and rumors.."Does your product use XML?"...its a good read anyday.