jpulgarin comments on Which College Major? - Less Wrong

7 Post author: eggman 06 February 2012 01:45AM

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Comment author: jpulgarin 06 February 2012 10:51:11AM *  4 points [-]

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%.

Comment author: jkaufman 08 February 2012 01:34:46PM 3 points [-]

Not everyone gets VC backing, though, which lowers your odds.

Comment author: CarlShulman 28 February 2012 04:22:09AM *  1 point [-]

That's not the raw data, it's adjusted to match groups for a comparison. If you look elsewhere in the paper:

The overall success rate on first time ventures is 25.3%. Not surprisingly, serial entrepreneurs have an above-average success rate of 36.9% on their first ventures: venture capitalists are more likely to be more enthusiastic about financing a successful entrepreneur than one who has previously failed.

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.

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