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Comment by Simucal | Hacker News Reader

I find it pretty refreshing to have someone candidly discuss their failed ambitions. The selection bias of insanely successful startups on HN can lead to a skewed perception of actual success rates. These are the kind of posts I need from time to time to keep myself grounded in reality so I can make better decisions.

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I totally agree that there's a selection bias for stories about successful outliers. On the other hand, it's not as if anyone is out there saying "Try it! You'll probably succeed!" Quite the opposite; almost everyone knows and admits that 9/10 fail.

Eric Ries has a great line in his talks about this. I'm paraphrasing it, but it's something like: "9/10 startups fail. I know yours is awesome so it won't, but the guy on your left; his will. The girl to your right; hers will. Same goes for their neighbours too."

Despite the failure, it was worth doing. I learnt a lot. About startups, about customers, and also about me. And besides, failing is faster than success!

Thanks for the kind words.

Perhaps the real problem is your counter-reaction: "almost everyone knows and admits that 9/10 fail."

A lot of people think that, but it's not 9 out of 10 startups that fail.

It's FAAR worse odds than that.

Oh? How far worse.

I seem to have the number 1% as the success rate in my head.

Doing some Googling gives a number like 10% success, but it's not clear whether these figures are only for companies that received VC-funding.

So actually, I'm not sure. Point taken.

It's probably easier to make lifestyle businesses pay off. And how is success / failure defined? I can imagine failure might mean that the VCs didn't make money? Then it could still have been worthwhile for the founders.

One thing I really appreciated at a recent interview with a startup was when they said, "the most likely outcome for startups in our position is Chapter 11 bankruptcy. We believe in our product and of course don't think that will happen, but that's what usually happens."

Perspective, perspective.

1) They say: 95% of businesses fail.

2) I say: 100% of the remaining 5% are successful.

Heh. The lesson I take: Well, then I'd better try this a bunch of times. Which means I need to make the tries cheap and quick enough.

or so it would seem. Don't rule out chasing an idea for years before you find it's successful. AirBnB, Pinterest, Craigslist etc etc

“Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand.”

— Bruce Barton

Don't forget to add the even more ambitious Elon Musk into your list... SpaceX and Tesla.

If its still all about perspective, might we say those 5% are still yet to fail.

Given a long enough timeline even currently successful companies can become future failures.

Edit:By this I mean even successful companies can eventually lose out to competition when they lose their edge. Only the Paranoid Survive - Andy Grove.

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