The Basics of Black Hole Formation

Not all stars end up dying as a black hole, right? It has to be a certain kind of star and even if it does collapse, they don't all form black holes. Most stars just keep aging and lead along and pretty unexciting demise. If you have enough mass in that initial clump of stuff, maybe more than 40 times the mass of our sun, then it can collapse and form a black hole. The endpoint of a star is determined almost entirely by its initial amount of mass.