[distant_hat]

There's a huge amount of survivorship bias in all such lists. Startups that succeed get analyzed a lot, those that did pretty much the same things but failed don't. To be rigorous about it, you'd have to define things like what's a startup, what constitutes success, what constitutes failure, far more carefully.

[muzani]

That's the good thing about lists that come from VCs. They analyze both the successes and failures, as well as things like risk level. YC also does a great job of not falling into the trap of copying the last superstar.

[ryanwaggoner]

True but huge caveat: their idea of success and the founder’s idea of success may differ wildly. If a modest exit makes the founder a few million and the VC just gets a single digit multiple, that’s not the kind of success they’re going to gravitate towards in their analysis. They may not label it a failure but they won’t be trying to identify how to replicate more of those, even if it will have changed the founder’s life and family for generations.

[muzani]

Yes, that is true.

But so far this one has done a good job at that. The first thing they do is even try to convince you that entrepreneurship isn't the most profitable path. The statistically best path is to work at an early stage company. But if you have a certain kind of insane resolve, then they'll guide you down it.

I think 'partial' success does get celebrated though, sort of like Reddit. Again, this is something seed investors do far better than Series C investor types.

The patterns are still pretty similar, as a good deal of this covers the path from idea to "ramen profitable".

[ummonk]

> The first thing they do is even try to convince you that entrepreneurship isn't the most profitable path. The statistically best path is to work at an early stage company.

That's just them, being self-interested since they need employees for their founders' startups more than they need new founders.

Realistically, the most profitable path statistically is to work at a FLNG or decacorn.

[ryanwaggoner]

Agreed. I'm completely skeptical that the expected return is higher for "early stage startup" vs large tech co or "decacorn" (love that term, btw) and investing in index funds and maybe some real estate.