Considering how valuable a successful startup can become, anyone familiar with the concept of expected value would be surprised if the failure rate weren't high. If a successful startup could make a founder $100 million, then even if the chance of succeeding were only 1%, the expected value of starting one would be $1 million. And the probability of a group of sufficiently smart and determined founders succeeding on that scale might be significantly over 1%. For the right people—e.g. the young Bill Gates—the probability might be 20% or even 50%. So it's not surprising that so many want to take a shot at it. In an efficient market, the number of failed startups should be proportionate to the size of the successes. And since the latter is huge the former should be too