> seek advice from unsuccessful people

Intuitively, I would guess that they have a better grasp of what made them fail than successful people have of what made them succeed.

I don't know; I think people in general are just not great at this. Successful people tend to underrate luck and overrate the brilliance of their own decisions, but the rest of us are prone to either reversing that and blaming everyone but ourselves, or being so determined to take accountability (or just depressed) that we become overly self-critical, or simply not understanding why things happened the way they did and reaching for any explanation that resolves the chaos into something narratively satisfying.

Yep, many successful people greatly underappreciate the effect of simple dumb luck in their lives. And often they just make up complex reasoning chains, even wholly believing them, that more of it was in their control/talent, etc.

Nonetheless, there are many successful people I would gladly listen to for advice, though they are often successful in a different meaning than what venture capitalists would use (e.g. parents with great kids, managing to keep a healthy work-life balance, happiness, and maybe even having time to spend on some cool hobby project -- you are heros!)

Intuitively, that'd make sense if that unsuccessful person eventually found success, otherwise who knows if they actually picked up what made them unsuccessful in the first place?