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> (You're making a common statistical mistake here. You're concluding that because 1/x startups succeed, the odds of each person's startup succeeding is 1/x. Yo

> (You're making a common statistical mistake here. You're concluding that because 1/x startups succeed, the odds of each person's startup succeeding is 1/x. You can see this clearly if you ask what the probability is that someone is over 6 feet tall. Although 1/x people are, the probability for each person is either 1 or 0. And while no one's chances of succeeding are 1, the startup case is closer to the height example than to rolling dice. Someone like the young Bill Gates would have a much higher probability of succeeding than a person selected at random.) More convincing evidence of this (and evidence that this analogy applies to the case of startups) would be to compare the probability of someone who has already succeeded at a startup working on a new startup versus someone who has never worked at a startup before or has failed in their previous attempts. Can you share that data?

nostrademons 13y ago
This data's been collected across the VC industry: http://www.vcconfidential.com/2009/02/josh-lerner-on-serial-entrepreneurs.html http://www.vcconfidential.com/2009/02/josh-lerner-on-serial-... Among VC-backed entrepreneurs, 34 percent of successful entrepreneurs succeed in their next venture, as compared to 23 percent of failed entrepreneurs and 22 percent of first-time entrepreneurs. This would suggest that yes, there is something about the entrepreneur that influences success, but it only improves your odds by about 50%. (Note that there are a number of confounding factors in the study, like it only looking at VC-funded entrepreneurs - total success rates are likely much lower, since very few prospective founders get funding - and that repeat entrepreneurs have many external advantages like better access to funding, a name in the press, a better reputation for recruiting, and a pre-existing network.)

nostrademons 13y ago

This data's been collected across the VC industry: http://www.vcconfidential.com/2009/02/josh-lerner-on-serial-entrepreneurs.html http://www.vcconfidential.com/2009/02/josh-lerner-on-serial-... Among VC-backed entrepreneurs, 34 percent of successful entrepreneurs succeed in their next venture, as compared to 23 percent of failed entrepreneurs and 22 percent of first-time entrepreneurs. This would suggest that yes, there is something about the entrepreneur that influences success, but it only improves your odds by about 50%. (Note that there are a number of confounding factors in the study, like it only looking at VC-funded entrepreneurs - total success rates are likely much lower, since very few prospective founders get funding - and that repeat entrepreneurs have many external advantages like better access to funding, a name in the press, a better reputation for recruiting, and a pre-existing network.)