[lajamerr]

Let's say we have 2 people in two different walks of life. Jim and Alice.

Both of them are entrepreneurs and like doing startups. Both of their goals are to take a startup from idea to $1 Billion+ IPO in 2 years and exit and then start the next start-up. If they don't reach 1 Billion IPO they just exit.

After 20 years. Jim and Alice have both attempted 10 startups.

Jim has reached the goal 2 out of 10 times. While Alice has reached the goal 8 out of 10 times.

Would it be a fallacy to bet on Alice if you had to invest in either Jim or Alice's startup?

[moralestapia]

Yes.

There's plenty of other variables at play.

e.g.

Jim built two huge public companies, while Alice reached "the goal" of selling them early and fast.

Jim's on food while Alice's on real estate, and the new bet has to do with food.

Jim's bootstrapped while Alice is not.

Jim's on hard tech while Alice does web3 stuff.

There's a reason why "past performance is no guarantee of future results".

[Eisenstein]

That is an indication of why the particulars are important, but not defining what makes the argument fallacious. For instance 'ad hominem' is a fallacy because attacking a person making an argument doesn't make the argument incorrect. Relying on past behavior to indicate future success is also what you just did, but you were more specific about the inputs.

[kirso]

I think its hard to prove without a very large statistical data set as we see that 8 out 10 times might IPO but in the next 50 years (if that would be possible) it might be 0 out of the next 10.

IMO the reason is that things change. People change. Markets change. The world just doesn't stay static. But our tendency is indeed to trust people who did something and I would probably also trust a person more given certain specifics as above.