Both. YC batches are littered with companies that disappeared. That's not a criticism of YC, that's reality.
Additionally, if you fund 100% of companies equally, if 1 becomes FB and 99 become nothing, dont the winnings from FB pay for the losses of the 99?
2) Yes that is how VC works.
1) People would definitely love a machine that prints gourmet food for them in their house, but it's really difficult to do that. It's so difficult that the amount of money it would take to make such a machine is pronably greater than all of the money in the world. This is what I mean by "the economy has a cap on the number of new ideas that can be funded"
- Product-market fit: Is there demand for our product? Is the timing for our product right?
- Customer acquisition: How can we make customers know that our product exists? How much does it cost to acquire a new customer (through ads, etc.)?
- Market size and profitability: Is the demand and profitability for our product sufficient to sustain a business?
- Building a viable product within the constraints of the runway capital (Uber for dog walking is not as capital intensive as building a self driving car fleet, for example)