I took the silver bullets as mostly being
just technical, e.g., for how to get the
Web server software at least five times faster.
But, yes, some of the 'options' considered
did not want to attack the software performance
so directly and wanted to do something like
'pivot'. Maybe an idea for a pivot could
be a silver bullet -- maybe. That is, I didn't
see pivots, strategy, or routine business execution
or building a fire under the sales and service
groups, although these can be crucial, as candidates for silver bullets.
On "guts", for a lot of entrepreneurs, they know as they start that if they fail it will cost them their savings, house, car, credit rating, likely damage their career, and maybe hurt their marriage and health. So such a person can't be short on "guts". And unexpected disasters, such as Microsoft's five times faster IIS, can pop up needing guts.
Still, one major source of needing guts is vast projects with half-vast planning. Or just poor projects. Hopefully with good projects with good planning, with some silver bullets in the crucial, core technology, the need for guts and "to stick with execution when it's needed" will be much lower than usually assumed. On "guts", entrepreneurs short on guts would not even have started.
Many times people are all over the place trying to over-pivot, when what they really need to do is focus at the job at hand. If execution is lacking, a new strategy won't help.
At a prior firm, a few of the sales people would come up with new flavors of the month. "We need to Open Source. That's why we lost." "We need to be SaaS. That's why we lost." "Not enough functionality." "Too expensive." The reality is there were buyers in our market, we just weren't winning.
This isn't to say there is never a time for a new strategy - pivoting is vital. It's just to do it at the right time, and have the guts to stick with execution when it's needed. Of course knowing when that right time is doesn't come easy.