It's a hard call to name root causes.

If they hadn't taken the money, what would the counterfactual article have said?

Everybody creates narritives and belief-systems, where causes and effects seem so clear.

Perhaps I'm far too skeptical about their self-analysis. I've met very few people where their own analysis about themselves has matched what I have read in them. So many people misread their own minds and emotional drives. So I have learnt to cynically look for excuses and rationalisations and justifications.

The article is brilliant because we too rarely hear about people's doubts and negatives.

Some people (whether successful or not) do know themselves, but it is uncommon in my experience.

I helped bootstrap a business and we were in an incubator. There I saw some of the side-effects on businesses and founders from taking investment. We were just lucky that we couldn't be bothered with doing the distracting pony-show to get an investor onboard: we would have taken investment if it weren't so costly to do so.

Money and ownership causes weird pressures.