What Percentage of Startups Fail?

I actually see a parallel between what's happening in web startups today and the telecom broom-and-bust that many of us older guys have experienced in 1999/2000. Back then we had Nortel acquiring Qtera, Xros and Coretek at about $3B each, thereby setting the venture business on fire and funded about 100 startups, all determined to be better.

Today we have MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and similarly numerous VC-backed startups that are trying to catch the wind. I suspect there will be disappointments as well and recently I wrote about my own experience in surviving startup failure which I entitled "What I learned from my Dad who taught me how to ride a bicycle". It is my sincere hope that this could be of value to someone.

http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html

--Denny--

Denny K Miu

I wonder what a 50% failure rate says about the level of success among the remaining companies. Traditional conventional wisdom was that only 10% of startups suceeded, but they succeeded spectacularly (more than 10x return on investment).

Does this imply that a lot of "successful" companies are generating very modest returns on investment?

Arguably the most important part of that article was the bit discussing the caffeinated donut.

The end of this article basically justifies the existence of YC.