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by steffoz 174 days ago
To be fair, it's rarely all for nothing for what I hear. Secondary stock sales [1] are very common and allow founders to take some big chips off the table. To me, it is more a matter of keeping things simple, manageable, safe and more fun for how I like to work :)

https://www.startuphacks.vc/blog/founders-guide-to-secondary...
1 comments
jacquesm 174 days ago
Sure, but your personal preferences have an outsized effect on your chances for success because they are very much aligned.

I know plenty of founders that gave it all and then some (including their health, their family relationships and in some cases their lives) and that ended up worse than the shape they were in when they started. So yes, you hear a lot of stories about secondary stock sales and so on but those are the exceptions and very much not the norm. That's just survivorship bias.

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bpt3 174 days ago
Fellow small business owner here. Just as a reminder, discussing any successful (where successful is defined as not failed) business is a lesson in survivorship bias.

Most businesses of all sizes, shapes, and forms fail within 10 years.

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lurk2 173 days ago
> Most businesses of all sizes, shapes, and forms fail within 10 years.

I hear this all the time with variations to the number of years, which makes me suspect it isn’t true.

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LastTrain 173 days ago
What part do you suspect isn’t true?
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lurk2 173 days ago
That a majority of businesses fail over a given duration of time. It’s probably true on a long-enough timescale, but the idea that the majority of businesses fail within one year or ten just seems completely dubious. How is a business defined? How is failure defined?
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LastTrain 173 days ago
You don’t need to wonder, that information is readily verifiable. Most businesses fail. https://www.bls.gov/bdm/bdmage.htm
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bpt3 173 days ago
Ignoring the available data indicating that it is the case, I'm curious about why this seems dubious to you in the first place?

Starting and maintaining a functioning business is difficult; the default outcome is failure (the end of the business as an operating entity) and you have to work to prevent that from happening every day that you want to remain open.

And I've never seen a claim that the majority of businesses fail in a year. Most anecdotes say a majority fail within 5 years, which seems to be approximately correct based on US data.

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