> to maintain a status quo

Startups are explicitly disrupting the status quo. Yeah, one needs to be good enough to do that but it’s nothing to downplay. That is hard in a world of established actors.

Leadership matters, Apples history is a prime example of this as shown by first faltering without Steve Jobs and then becoming the most profitable company after he rejoined.

Nonetheless, you're still attributing way too much to the ability of the leadership. After all, that story is so remarkable precisely because it's pretty much the only will known example of this.

Even Steve failed with Next, and had to sell it to Apple.

I like the description someone made on HN that "NeXT acquired Apple for minus 400 million".

DoubleClick got an even better deal, acquiring Google for -$3.1 billion ('08 dollars)