The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
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Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#2The data mining bias / model risk here is huge. Let's see how he gets on truly out of sample.
Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#3Retroactively fitting a model to prove history is not that difficult. Accurately predicting the future may be a bit trickier. Just ask technical stock traders.
Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#4Retroactively fitting a model to prove history is not that difficult. Accurately predicting the future may be a bit trickier. Just ask technical stock traders.
Well it depends on proper cross-validation, sample size and of course predictability (i.e. 4 * P(Suc.|data) * P(Fail.|data)<<1). But online prediction is of course what will tell the long term reliability of any model.
Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#5from the article:
He admits the models will never be perfect, but thinks that even a model that’s only right about 50 percent of the time could help investors and entrepreneurs avoid particularly bad ideas
dunno why but I can't stop thinking that tossing a coin could achieve the same goal :)
Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#6> According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about half of all businesses fail within five years.
> He [...] thinks that even a model that’s only right about 50 percent of the time could help investors and entrepreneurs avoid particularly bad ideas
...does he have a bridge to sell me too? What am I missing?
(One can simply predict "always succeeds" and will be right half the time.)
Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#7"The Machine That Won the War."
Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#8>> Using this process, he discovered some surprising things—most notably that a company’s team is only about 12 percent predictive of a company’s success. “You need to find a good team that won’t ruin the company, but hiring ‘rock stars’ isn’t that great,” he explains. The market the company is entering is far more important than who’s running the company.
Makes you wonder why we're paying these people so much money.
Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#9Retroactively fitting a model to prove history is not that difficult. Accurately predicting the future may be a bit trickier. Just ask technical stock traders.
public markets will be much more information efficient than this.
Re: The Man Who Knows Whether Any Startup Will Live or Die
#10> even a model that’s only right about 50 percent of the time could help investors
That's equivalent to a coin flip. I didn't get the point he was trying to make. 66% looks good though.