What are some other ways that we can make businesses that are more resilient? Ones that increase the chance of upside, while reducing the risk of failure?
Those assume you're creating a business to be a blowup success.
It's entirely possible (and quite useful) to create businesses that are small, provide for you and your family, don't scale infinitely, but generate a good steady income or side income for a good chunk of your life.
And you can often run multiple of those at once. A friend of a friend called them, "Nickel generators." None of his activities, alone, sustain him, but he's got his fingers in a lot of pies, has a lot of small income streams, and he's not too dependent on any of them at any one point in time.
What is valuable, at least in my experience, is going deeper than anyone else does in a particular area, and making yourself easy to find. My side gig which is generating a couple hundred a month pretty regularly is battery pack rebuilds for a common brand of electric bike kit, from a company that has
awful post-sales support if you're out of warranty. I spend $0 on advertising (actually, my advertising makes me beer money), because it's in the form of a deeply technical blog. I haven't had to spend anything on SEO because I'm the top hit for quite a few queries now. :)
I'd also argue that customer service is key. So many companies are impossible to reach now if you have a problem. Stand out by actually listening to your customers.