[brudgers]

The odds of (#fail, #fail) for two startups (A, B) are much greater than 50%. When investing in two companies (#fail, #fail) is not #success.

At a 1% #success probability the failure rate is ~98%. The 1% #success rate is based on the a knowledgeable person choosing A and independently choosing B. If that person can obtain information that lets them improve their selections to %2 #success probability, they can reduce the total number of investments necessary to achieve any particular expected return on investment.

Reducing the number of investments may improve the investor's ability to influencing the outcome of each company in their portfolio, because the investor can allocate more time, energy, and resources to each company in their portfolio [resuming the investor brings business expertise to the table].

[x1798DE]

The article is claiming that the guy can predict which things are going to succeed and which are going to fail, not make them succeed or fail. His evidence for this is that 50% of the time, he's right (e.g. [success, success], [fail, fail] are both success conditions for him). For him to be adding any information to the system, he has to get it right more often than either choosing randomly or using a fixed zero-information strategy (always bet fail/always bet succeed). You explicitly said that the joint probability matters, but then miscalculated the joint probability of him guessing correctly by random chance.

[brudgers]

I apologize for not making myself clear enough to communicate as effectively as might be hoped.