> YC will proudly tell you that you are more likely to end up with a billion dollar business if you join them. That may be true. What they’re more reluctant to tell you is that only about 50 companies met that expectation out of the 4,000 or so that went through their program. That’s 1.25%. To be fair, that’s actually quite impressive, but let’s say you have the stamina and willpower to go through YC three times in your lifetime. You’d need approximately 26 lifetimes to hit the jackpot! See the problem now?

No. Those are frankly astonishing odds, and success exists on a spectrum between the extrema of abject failure and a billion-dollar business. Framing outcomes as one of two, mutually exclusive states feels disingenuous. (Also, minor nit: that's not how probability works.)

I'm ignorant of the startup space, so the author's conclusions might be generally accurate. I don't know. But the piece sets off red flags for me, so I'm distrustful of it. Kudos for introducing me to the concept of ergodicity, though!