Data that's not data.

There's a popular saying that half of new businesses fail during the first year. Even though that has been debunked, stats still hold only 25% of new businesses make it to the 15th year.

Now, such data as the above can mislead if you take them at face value. People start new businesses for a whole lot of reasons. I'm not sure many new SMEs are started with the aim of becoming a generational business. People start businesses to fix a financial gap, to utilize unused cash, to try out new interests, to test a hypothesis and so on. Such businesses form the bulk of what statistics count as failed businesses because they probably didn't make it past the first year.

I mean, I started two "businesses" while in the University. I sold self-help books and I started a news blog for my campus. The books business didn't last 9 months, but it was wildly successful in my opinion, it made money for my final year project which was just what I started it for. The news blog didn't do well, I was testing out my idea and I wouldn't even call it a failure because it brought me some connections.

Thinking through this, I just think you shouldn't take any data at face value, the devil is indeed in the details.
I like the examples you point out because it also shows you that a lot of those failed businesses must be the ones earlier in someones career. 

So like if you were to start one now that became a 'success', technically 1/3 of your businesses failed because you had two that didn't survive right?

I like this idea of the 100th pushup. Like lets say you're trying to get fit and really you only get challenged at the final 10 reps. One could argue that the first 90 reps were useless because only the final ten actually make you stronger. But without the first 90 you can't have the final 10.
2021-07-24 20:45:32

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