[eesmith]

Are you measuring project success or personal success?

If you are a trust fund baby, pick the one that's the most fun.

If you have to feed your family, pick the one that's most likely to get the income.

Success rates like 0.0001 are essentially made up.

Assuming self-funded, option #2 means a potential earnings loss (compared to employment) of at least ~50K/yer * 4 years = $200K. That means your projected expected earnings would need to be $2 billion.

It's even worse if "0.0001" means "0.0001%".

What's the probability of success in doing A and then doing B, given that doing A likely gives you the experience to help do B?