

What Percentage of Startups Fail? - neilc
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/business/12offline.html?ex=1336622400&en=a9d4ca6132503bb7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

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gigamon
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

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sethjohn
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?

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

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daniel-cussen
Yea truly, I am beholden to its unadultered genius.

Will it replace ramen?

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rms
The genius is that it doesn't have to be donuts -- it could be any food!

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florianb
That's depressing shows again that ideas are worth nothing, it's in the
execution. I presented the same idea to a german cornflakes manufacturer years
ago ( coffein enriched flakes and other breakfast food), they tried to do it
but failed.

Blog Article but in german: [http://id-o.de/2007/04/24/koffein-koffein-
koffein-nachtliche...](http://id-o.de/2007/04/24/koffein-koffein-koffein-
nachtliche-ideen/)

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rms
Yeah... sometimes, more so than the execution, it's about having money or
someone who wants to give you money. If you had 10 million dollars you could
start making your own line of "Extreme" caffeinated breakfast cereals/health
foods.

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far33d
The end of this article basically justifies the existence of YC.

