The sigmoid curve's survivorship bias

I was reading about the sigmoid curve again last night. It wasn't my first time, but something hit me this time; it has an implicit survivorship bias.

Quick overview of the sigmoid curve, from "The Effective Change Manager's Handbook":

"Change is a necessity for survival. This was brought home to me many years ago as I read Charles Handy’s book The Empty Raincoat: Making sense of the future (Handy, 1994). He describes a pattern, the ‘sigmoid curve’ (shaped somewhat like a Greek letter ‘s’). It is a classic life cycle that traces the stumbling start, the rise and success, and the eventual decay of empires, organizations, products, processes and even an individual person or career."

If anything - for example, a product - makes it through the life cycle from stumbling start to decay, then it obviously succeeded at some point. Or put another way, things that fail don't get sigmoid curves, because they don't provide enough points to plot against time.

Key takeaway: Not everything we try will succeed, so it makes sense to start several new things before the sigmoid curve we are presently on enters the decay phase. And if we are lucky, one or more of the new things will succeed, and we'll be able to plot sigmoid curves for them. But we need to know that when we do this, we may not see all the things we failed at.