“I'm a crotchety old guy. I worry about all these new companies. I'm glad that they're easier to start, but the problem is, they're just as hard to finish as th

“I'm a crotchety old guy. I worry about all these new companies. I'm glad that they're easier to start, but the problem is, they're just as hard to finish as they have always been” This is a great observation from Mike Olson. I think a lot of people who are dropping off to start on the entrepreneurial path vastly underestimate the difficulty of building a company to a point where they can sell or IPO or get just get a good return. Lot of the startup-lore is built around expectation of success that has vastly diminished in the last few years and we will soon find a lot of people who are thirty-five, have worked through three-four failed startups and nothing to offer to the broader world. If you look at number of seed accelerators in the US[1], we have about 175. Every year about 3000 companies are formed and a vast number of them fail. Take the top accelerator in the country (perhaps the world). YCombinator. It has funded about 550 companies, pg is rightfully proud of the value created. However, if you took out the top 10 of them I suspect 99% of the value goes away. I remember just AirBnB and Dropbox making 75% of the value. Think about it, even if you came out of YC, you have a 2% chance of success. That means if you even if you join a startup accelerator in Middletown, USA your chance is probably 0.5% and if you don’t even get to join a accelerator it is probably even less (0.1%?) I suspect a lot of people still think there is a 5% chance you will succeed in a startup. That was the case 15 years back. With a 5% success rate, you could possible iterate to a better than even odd of success if you went through 3-4 startups. If you were told you have a 0.1% chance of success, it is more of a random crapshoot. What is it that you will learn and show after 3-4 attempts? The other option of going to college, working for a big company and the associated payoff hasn’t changed much. If the startup option is now 50 times riskier, you need to think hard about your choices. Maybe you are an optimist, that’s OK but don’t default to choices. [1] http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators