And selection bias. The most successful startups attract the most VC interest.
It's like Harvard grads. Yes, they're a very high calibre and more successful on average, but a lot (not all) of that is selection instead of creation.
Bootstrapped, small, one person companies are still startups, where the odds of success are less than 10%, while venture-backed startups is 20%-30%. [0][1] What non-survivors are excluded from these cohorts?
That’s not survivorship bias. And the measures of success in the article I cited are universal. The way you’re describing success (not going out of business) is included in those sources.
To be clear: staying in business is the universal success metric I mentioned and cited earlier (not funding or exit). Here’s another source citing the same 9/10 failure (10% success) rate for all startups in the U.S.
> Many small businesses start up every month but the failure rate is high. As of 2019, startup failure rates are around 90%. 21.5% of startups fail in the first year, 30% in the second year, 50% in the fifth year, and 70% in their 10th year. [0]
Small bootstrapped companies can still exist and succeed against these odds (several are cited in the article), but to make the claim that these odds don’t apply to bootstrapped startups is foolish wishful thinking.
One person unicorns don't generally exit in the same way, this whole article was about the problems trying to raise for small one person companies.