A 32% failure rate among venture-funded enterprises sounds <i>wildly</i> low. I'm guessing his data is biased; for instance, he may be over-weighting companies that receive multiple rounds of funding. His data may also count any acquisition as "success"; in fact, most acquisitions aren't (many don't even return investor capital) --- boards often manage to structure wind-downs as buyouts for the sake of image.<p>I'd be shocked to learn that that failure rate for A-round -funded companies was lower than 60%, where "failure" means "liquidity event that does not beat break-even for investors".<p>Having been founded and been involved with multiple VC-funded companies: to my mind, the worst thing about VC is that it delays the inevitable. If you can't sell the minimum viable product, you won't sell the 1.0 release. If your minimum viable product requires VC, it isn't minimal. All VC does then is rob you of 1-2 of the most productive years of your life. It creates an illusory high-stakes effort with no payout. It hides the "hustle" part of entrepreneurship (or, worse, outsources it to hired-gun m-teams); if you have hustle, you can get to 1.0 without VC, and if you don't, you fail anyways.