In my mind, startups are less like the lottery and more like blackjack. You are gambling either way (as with any investment) but, with blackjack and startups you can optimize.
Unlike the lottery, knowledge and skill play a role here.
Unlike the lottery, knowledge and skill play a role here.
True, but that's not quite the analogy I was going for, the analogy was how survivorship bias is used in both cases for promoting the idea-- everyone picks the winners and remembers / tells / markets those while disregardign the losers. I do it too, it is just a natural human tendency.
In both cases, if every time someone heard about a successful startup they also heard about many failed ones, they might have a different perspective.
The best you can do is to accept that you're not an expert in picking winners. (Just see how many hedge fund managers underperform the market. Even the supposed experts have problems doing any better than random decisions.)