You make a good point that I haven't considered. I would define "success" or "failure" as the ultimate outcome of the efforts of the group of founders who worke

You make a good point that I haven't considered. I would define "success" or "failure" as the ultimate outcome of the efforts of the group of founders who worked together on one or more products, regardless any part/full time jobs they had. Having one successful product, no matter how many failed ones, equals success. Having no successful products equals failure. That's just my definition -- feel free to pick a different one if you like it better. One should be skeptical of any statistical study (didn't you know that 60% of statistical studies are flawed? :) ) but I think it would nonetheless be interesting to analyze a larger data set of startup outcomes to answer the VC funding question.