The non-obvious thing was that the author walks blindly into every single survivorship bias there is and then draws a definitive conclusion based on them.

My thinking as well...

They reverse engineer CEO's trackrecords... Good thing all these CEO's are blissfully unaware of their relative luck and build upon their own ability to fix anything.

Nothing is ever non-obvious in hindsight in the social sciences ;)

That said, I like that one way this can be read is that being a C-level executive is typically not about some inherent skill or talent. Instead, people simply grow into the role when given (and taking) the chance. This has implications on what a just level of compensation would be.

You're misinterpreting the article.

The "go small to go big" thing isn't about being a CEO of a small company.

It's about taking over a small project, growing it successfully, then using that experience & reference to launch yourself into the CEO position of a large company.