Predicting failure is easy, though, because most things fail: you can predict everything will fail and be right 90%+ of the time. The venture capital model operates on that understanding: most things will fail, but in taking a chance on lots of things that will probably fail, you're exposed to the very small number of things that will succeed in a meaningful way.

Success is the aberration, and being able to identify the things that will succeed is where the challenge is. If you think you have talent in identifying things that will succeed, then invest in things, and if you're right, you'll make lots of money. Unfortunately, as you'll discover, predicting failure is easy because there's a million ways to fail and very few ways to succeed.

Mighty investors would have had 90%+ confidence it would fail, but that's fine, because it's the tiny chance it might succeed that mattered.

You're talking from a pure statistical standpoint. Yes, the probability that a random startup fails is higher than the probability that it succeeds. Nobody denies that. I doubt anybody said, "I predict Mighty is going to fail because most startups fail."

It's much better to argue on WHY people said that Mighty was a dubious product proposition -- from a first principles perspective. That way at least we can learn some lessons from it. Contrary to what people are saying, I doubt the reason for failure is that since Mighty's inception the browsing experience has gotten much faster. Because it really hasn't.

Mighty was as doomed in the beginning as it is now. -- and you know it if you've been using a web browser for the past few years. If you don't live in a bubble, you realize $30/month is absurd. These are the important points, not "most startups fail."

Nah, predicting failure or success is exactly the same thing.

VCs don't simply predict success and bet; they use their power to make it happen or crush it.

Overall, I have a very low confidence level in most of the stories told by VCs about themselves, and I am not sure about their positive influence in the economy or technology.

> I wish there was a way to make money by shorting bad ideas

That's a great idea for a startup, VCs would be falling over themselves for a piece!

I wish there was a way to short this short startup startup…

A wild SoftBank appears

You can’t short bad ideas directly. But you can (or could until recently) make money off them by coming up with them and pitching them to VCs yourself. That’s kind of like shorting.

It’s easy to do. Just tell the founder you’re willing to bet $10k that they will (define “fail” metric and time). Some will take you up on it.

(Though I bet your won’t do it as often as you would have thought, now that your money is on the line. Pun intended.)

That's a terrible bet to take as a founder. Assuming even odds, put aside $10k for some time, and you may double it if you're doing well and probably don't need it, but if you're failing, you lose the money.

The only utility is vengefulness, perhaps.

Not that easy. Most founders would not even take the offer seriously.

Then you have to choose/agree and pay some kind of arbitration.

I think you'd need a startup prediction market to do this. Founder describes startup and success, people bet on yes or no.

You are right.

But the trick, in this case is parsimony, the opposite strategy of what VCs do.

Only shorting when I am 100% positive the idea is a fail.