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YC companies are, to the best of my knowledge, mostly looking for unicorn-style plays. That's a very different game to a lifestyle business, and one where I wou

YC companies are, to the best of my knowledge, mostly looking for unicorn-style plays. That's a very different game to a lifestyle business, and one where I would agree 100% that the failure rate is extremely high. Small business failure rates: well, for starters, the usually-quoted numbers have been updated as of late. A quick Google shows that most sources are converging on around a 60% success rate for small businesses at the moment. (I think that's actually unrealistically high - I'd estimate more like 40% and guess they aren't accurately polling online businesses, but hey.) Secondly, there's a significant difference between small business failure rates and small businessperson failure rates. As I mentioned above, most people's first businesses will fail. That will obviously skew the numbers in favour of failure: indeed, given that it's surprising the survival rates are as high as they are. You're correct that it's (sometimes) easier to build a successful business after you've already built one. However, you don't mention the secondary point, which is that it's also much easier to build a successful business after you've already tried really hard and failed at one.

marcosdumay 9y ago
> there's a significant difference between small business failure rates and small businessperson failure rates Most people can not afford a failed business. If you are looking at repeated tries, you are taking a huge amount of survivorship bias already.
- thenomad 9y ago
  Depends on the business. Not everything requires huge or even significant initial outlay. For example, infoproducts (or any kind of digital product) are very cheap to start up. They take time, but not necessarily a lot of money.
  - igk 9y ago
    The thing is, time is money. Leisure time is one privilege of the rich, or lucky, which leads to unfair compounding advantages (like philosophy as well). "Normal" people (as in, if you selected them at random) don't have the time to learn the special skills required and also invest the time to develop the very specific type of product you are talking about. So, in order to start a business, you need to have a break. It can be getting lucky with your job, a windfall, or just gambling some precious savings or time onto your idea. And then, most of the time, it fails, and most people cannot afford to retry. Those that manage anyway are the exception, not the rule

marcosdumay 9y ago

> there's a significant difference between small business failure rates and small businessperson failure rates Most people can not afford a failed business. If you are looking at repeated tries, you are taking a huge amount of survivorship bias already.

thenomad 9y ago
Depends on the business. Not everything requires huge or even significant initial outlay. For example, infoproducts (or any kind of digital product) are very cheap to start up. They take time, but not necessarily a lot of money.
- igk 9y ago
  The thing is, time is money. Leisure time is one privilege of the rich, or lucky, which leads to unfair compounding advantages (like philosophy as well). "Normal" people (as in, if you selected them at random) don't have the time to learn the special skills required and also invest the time to develop the very specific type of product you are talking about. So, in order to start a business, you need to have a break. It can be getting lucky with your job, a windfall, or just gambling some precious savings or time onto your idea. And then, most of the time, it fails, and most people cannot afford to retry. Those that manage anyway are the exception, not the rule