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jkaufman comments on Which College Major? - Less Wrong
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As one with similar plans to jpulgarin (minus the dancing?), I too am quite interested in relevant research. I know Carl Shulman has investigated entrepreneurship success rates but I don't know exactly what he found - I think I'll email him to find out. I am particularly curious about that '9/10 startups fail' statistic, which is repeated everywhere but I haven't yet seen confirmed.
I've spoken to Carl about the subject and he pointed me to this paper: http://www.nber.org/papers/w14219
This paper puts the success rate of venture-backed companies at ~18%.
Not everyone gets VC backing, though, which lowers your odds.
That's not the raw data, it's adjusted to match groups for a comparison. If you look elsewhere in the paper:
That's for IPOs only, adding in companies that were acquired, and companies that remained private but made their owners a good amount of money via compensation packages and future sale or IPO would further boost the stats. See my 80,000 hours posts on this.
Carl wrote a blog post over at 80,000 Hours where he discusses success rates for startups, and how these data might affect your career choice if you're aiming to donate a lot of money to effective charities:
Salary or startup? How do-gooders can gain more from risky careers