[imgabe]

Let's say you have a million people. They each roll a 6 sided die. The odds of getting any one number are 1/6. The odds of getting any given number 5 times in a row are 1/6^5 or about .0001286. Out of your million people, 128 of them will probably roll e.g. 3 five times in a row. It doesn't mean they have a particular talent for rolling 3s. If you get the million people to roll 5 more times, probably a different set of a million people will roll all 3s.

I'm not saying there's no skill involved. There are certainly things you can do to guarantee failure. But if someone has 5 successful startups in a row, it's not easy to distinguish them from someone who rolled 5 3s in a row. The population of people who've done startups is pretty small, relatively speaking.

[voronoff]

This is reminding very much of the debate around the Efficient Market Hypothesis, as to whether traders can be systematically good vs. just repeatedly lucky. There is a lot of lit on this issue.