That Andy Rachleff quote about product/market fit comes to mind "when you have it, you can screw up almost everything and still succeed"

An example: Larry and Sergey deciding to do away with managers back in the early 00's would have decimated a startup that didn't have a burgeoning monopoly. Was barely a bump in the road for Google.

I think it might be more like what I read in a book about Hughes one time, that basically when he was at his craziest he was still making incredible amounts of money and the theory was that once you reach a certain size/power it takes on a life of its own and you continue to make money despite fucking up a lot - although one can see a lot of countervailing examples I think in a case of some of the companies I've been at simple economic inertia meant they still did well.