That's not really how biases work. For example, I'm sure many of the founders of failed startups were nice people, who got stuff done and moved fast (while responding to emails quickly).
I do believe that the people at YC have a lot of experience (and are likely to be quite systematic in their analyses when they do them) but that doesn't mean I'm going to take every post at face value.
That's exactly how survivorship bias, in particular, works:
"Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that 'survived' some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility." [Wiki]
Sam's saying that very successful companies tend to hit all of these points, in contrast to less successful or unsuccessful companies, which will miss one or more of them.
You don't need to take the post at face value, but if you're claiming this is a result of survivorship bias, then you're arguing that successful companies just happen to have these traits, and they don't actually help the companies succeed. I don't think that's true.
> You don't need to take the post at face value, but if you're claiming this is a result of survivorship bias, then you're arguing that successful companies just happen to have these traits, and they don't actually help the companies succeed. I don't think that's true.
I think this is exactly what he's arguing
If you're of the opinion that startup successes are mostly luck and timing, then this makes perfect sense.
If a team/company had every single positive/beneficial trait on that list, then how much more likely are they to "succeed"?
They are good guidelines, may not necessarily or sufficiently make a company successful. In reality, things are too complicated by simple following guidelines.
