[jcr]

>There's an obvious startup here.

Maybe, but the related startup idea that came to mind for me might seem a bit odd; similar linguistic patters might exist in statements made by startup founders and they might be indicative of success or failure. The "excessive positivity" and "unnatural politeness" seen prior to betrayal may also be present prior to startup failure.

The real problem with attempting to prove or disprove this conjecture seems to be getting the needed data. It might be possible from public statements from founders, but I think the more significant gems would only be found private correspondence between the founders and investors (or possibly customers). I sincerely doubt YC partners or VC's like Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) and Ben Horowitz are going to let "just anyone" do linguistic analysis against all of their private personal/business email content.