The title of the article that sparked this post claims to tell us “What do highly successful startups have in common?” If only it were that easy.

I bet you can name the data error here just by re-reading the title of that article.

Of course, you just know there’s going to be a survivorship bias problem. Here, survivorship bias means that the author looked at highly successful startups and figured out how much money they raised, and turned that into an argument that you should raise at least $390,000 (but it’s oddly written as 0.395 million – who does that?) to be highly successful.

Oh, that’s just not how it works. There’s no information about all the companies that raised $400k or more and didn’t turn into “highly successful startups.”

I mean, this is my problem with a lot of startup/venture bloggers: too often, they know absolutely nothing and are too dumb to realize it.

And then some other person who knows even less decides to publish and publicize it. No wonder our economy grow funny – half the people are basing their decisions on stuff that’s worse than random.

So I do what I can to be clear, correct, and separate the made-up stories and unverifiable platitudes from the realities. When you are looking for a New York startup lawyer or a New Jersey startup lawyer, you want one with Silicon Valley experience and practical knowledge about startup law. Best of luck to all of you.