Also, there's a working paper by a Pepperdine professor showing firms with patents four times more likely to succeed. I linked [2] particularly becaus

Also, there's a working paper by a Pepperdine professor showing firms with patents four times more likely to succeed. I linked [2] particularly because it has a greater focus on the software industry. I'd also add that it's possible that there is a high correlation between having patents and working on a business that is well ahead of the curve relative to industry. When you create a photosharing service based on off-the-shelf parts like Rails or Angular, you are less likely to do any patentable work. It's also less likely that you have a defensible business model if successful, since anyone else out there can pick up the same off the shelf parts or analogues and build the same product. With patentable work, the idea may be out there, but the implementation isn't necessarily out there as well and you often don't have enough information in a patent filing for someone skilled in the start of the art to implement a comparable clean room implementation without spending a long time experimenting to reach parity.