It would be a start just to find an industry where some participants are VC funded and some aren't, and then look at how they each fared. As appealing as such

It would be a start just to find an industry where some participants are VC funded and some aren't, and then look at how they each fared. As appealing as such a question might be in abstract, I think the results would be pretty useless in practice. There's too much diversity, too many variables. Every startup is at rather incommensurable with every other, beyond the basic financial anchors. Every product's success is a highly stochastic combination of team, market conditions, direction of winds, luck, etc. What would such a study--regardless of "scientific" rigour, which, if desired, may itself may be an unintelligible criterion given the complexity of the question--really tell us?