According to the same source, 2022 was the second-most VC deals since 2006, and ca the 4th worst for IPOs according to stockanalysis.com. There's clearly a mass

According to the same source, 2022 was the second-most VC deals since 2006, and ca the 4th worst for IPOs according to stockanalysis.com. There's clearly a massive upward trend in VC deals, while IPOs are much more stationary. Eyeballing those charts, the average number of VC deals, especially in the relevant period for today's IPOs (10+ years ago), is probably closer to 5-6k, and the average number of IPOs to 250, ie ~5%. Combining this with the folk wisdom that 90% of all startups fail, this seems to suggest that half of the successful startups go public, actually. Lots of things that we'd need to account for (not all IPOs are probably startups, # VC deals != # of startups,...), but speaking about tendencies, the data doesn't seem to support such a strong statement.