The metaphor in the title refers to "no silver bullets"

> There is no silver bullet that’s going to fix that. No, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.

VC thinking at its worst:

  Me: “Why does competitor X have five times your revenue?”
  Entrepreneur: “We are using partners and OEMs, because we can’t build a direct channel like competitor X.”
  Me: “Why not? If you have the better product, why not knuckle up and go to war?”

Um, because building out direct sales means we will have to hire a bunch of people, expend a huge amount of our revenue, and have a decent probability that we will completely fail and take the company with it.

But, yeah, that's visionary!

> “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?”

Note that "successful" has only one definition to these kinds of people. Deal with them at your own peril.