I'm always deeply suspicious of "statistics" that claim startups only have a 1 in 10 chance of success. From the article: "if 90% of startups fail, it simply can’t be the case that all of the startups they know are succeeding."

But it looks like that may not be so far from the truth: "About three-quarters of venture-backed firms in the U.S. don't return investors' capital, according to recent research by Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School."[1]

1: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/21/the-most-ex...