Great essay. Enlightening, actually. A few somewhat provocative questions:
If you could theoretically "randomize" start up ideas, founders, business models, and every other primary ingredient in current "start-up theory", like a giant multivariate test... would we not see similar results to now?
Or similarly, if you closed your eyes and invested "blindly" how would you expect your results to differ (ROI-wise)?
It seems like investing results more closely resemble a lottery than a predictive model, based on your description.
Sort of a scary thought: what if current investment criteria (and therefore start-up goals) are largely irrelevant?
For example, IQ is distributed in the same way as winners and losers in start-ups. What if that is a key factor,(purely hypothetically, of course)?
In theory, shouldn't "good criteria" for investing generate progressively better results within smaller and smaller samples?
If you could theoretically "randomize" start up ideas, founders, business models, and every other primary ingredient in current "start-up theory", like a giant multivariate test... would we not see similar results to now?
Or similarly, if you closed your eyes and invested "blindly" how would you expect your results to differ (ROI-wise)?
It seems like investing results more closely resemble a lottery than a predictive model, based on your description.
Sort of a scary thought: what if current investment criteria (and therefore start-up goals) are largely irrelevant?
For example, IQ is distributed in the same way as winners and losers in start-ups. What if that is a key factor,(purely hypothetically, of course)?
In theory, shouldn't "good criteria" for investing generate progressively better results within smaller and smaller samples?