To some extent building and running a business is a zero sum game, you don't have to be good at it you [just] have have to better at it than other people. Tech

To some extent building and running a business is a zero sum game, you don't have to be good at it you [just] have have to better at it than other people. Tech is also special in that it's often a winner takes all (to varying extents) market. A bunch of small/medium companies selling similar products usually can't survive long-term since geographic barriers aren't really a thing anymore. So I simple don't think it's possible for 50-90% of all the companies were talking about to survive and grow at a pace that's fast enough for VCs. If they can't grow they'll will be outcompeted/bought out by companies that can't. Even if they can survive and grow at a modest pace long-term there is no point for VCs to invest into them. I don't see how picking more competent people could significantly change this situation. They are all still competing for slices of the same even if that pie is constantly growing entrenched player with a lot of resources have a much better shot at capturing that growth than any newcomer. > We'll never know because there is no counterfactual fund that invests in the companies nobody else invested in, to test whether they were false negatives. I don't see how could that work unless VCs reduce the number of companies that they invest in by a magnitude or two.