As usual, Mark tells a good story by leaving out a lot.
So, he has "(0.5%) eventually sell for $150 million or more".
Okay, so what? Is his argument that the chances of an entrepreneur are just a lottery draw with winning odds of 0.5%? If so, then that's misleading.
Why? Because it shouldn't be a lottery draw. Instead, the entrepreneur should know more than just a lottery draw. The entrepreneur should have done some good, careful, solid, and quite likely effective planning so that when, based on the additional information he has and the planning he has done, he goes for the $150 million or more, his chances are quite good, hopefully well over 50%. If he can't plan that well, then he needs to learn how or get into another game.
VCs, including Mark, won't teach how to do such planning, won't help with the planning, won't evaluate the planning, and, instead, will just report the figure of 0.5% from just looking in simple terms at all the e-mail they receive or some such.
Although the odds may have looked like 0.5% from 50,000 feet up, it is quite possible that for the winners down on the ground the odds looked and were much better than that.
Net, it is quite possible to see a large need, think of a good solution, find a way to provide that solution, and plan a business to deliver that solution, even with some new, advanced technology, all with quite high probability -- all over our economy, all around the world, in many industries, people do such planning and execution with quite
high probability.
E.g., when Intel decides to move from line width of some x nanometers to 0.66 x nanometers and build a $2 billion plant to manufacture at 0.66 x nanometers, do you believe that the project is high risk with only 0.5% chance of success? BS. Intel has taken many such steps in their history, and so far they may have had some delays and some kinks to iron out but never really had an actual failure.
E.g., recently movie director
James Cameron got in a specially
designed 'boat' and took a little side trip to
the bottom of the Mariana Trench, about six
miles down or some such. No one, not even all
the world together, has a lot of experience
building 'boats' to go six miles down. So, what
he did was essentially for the first time. Thus,
he needed a lot of quite good planning. And he came
up alive. Lesson: Planning to attack the unknown for
the first time is possible.
The great old lesson was the Wright Brothers. Langley had just fallen into the Potomac River. But the Wright Brothers took a train from Ohio to Kitty Hawk and flew apparently with little or no doubt. Why? Good planning. How? They built the first quite good wind tunnel and, thus, had some good data (although they missed Reynolds number) on wing lift and drag. They also knew horsepower and thrust of their propellers. They had the weight of their plane and passenger. They understood the crucial role of three axis control and had a good enough solution. A little arithmetic, and it was clear that they should be successful. And they were. First time.
Planning is doable. Sorry, Mark.
Let's put it this way, drawing from Mark's post: He did point out correctly that a house in the area will set one back about $2 million. Well, if making that much money is as difficult as Mark suggests, then house prices should fall!
Are we learning yet, e.g., how to earn?
A good, old lesson, especially in business, is "Always look for the hidden agenda.". So, VCs are in the business of buying parts of young companies. So, as a buyer, they want more inventory to select from. So, Mark can tell CxOs that their slot is for just chump change and that they need to be CEO and get some VC funding. And if they were a real man, they'd d be paying cash for a $2 million house, and for that they'd need to be a CEO with VC funding. For more, a buyer wants to tell the seller that their product isn't very good, e.g., has only 0.5% chance of being worth $150+ million. So, maybe such is part of Mark's agenda.
Then telling entrepreneurs how actually to plan a $150+ million exit, with some significant probability, is not part of the agenda.