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Taking a look at Google's data set would sure settle a lot of arguments:

1. Does age matter?

2. How important it is to be in Silicon Valley?

3. Are biz devs really important?

4. Are cofounders really important?




It would settle the question for past companies in established markets, not new companies in new markets. Would evaluations of US Steel and Standard Oil apply to (early 2000s)Google and (early 1980s)Microsoft, in terms of your proposed arguments?

That's the problem with basing all future predictions on past data; Mr. Rachleff also questioned Google’s reliance on its algorithms. “There’s no analysis to be done when you’re evaluating a company that’s creating a new market, because there’s no market to analyze,” he said. “You have to apply judgment.”


The next Google is an outlier, you can't infer them from rules that give you few winners.


I wonder about this. Was Google itself an outlier? I don't think so. Indeed I'd say you probably could have discovered Google using similar metrics the article claims they are using, such as scholarly trends (but possibly not founder history).


Google was not an outlier, they were from Stanford, etc, etc. But it doesn't imply anything about the possibility to catch outliers, they can't catch them with those rules.

Even for non outliers, how can you catch Microsoft in front of casual opportunities (DOS) that gives them an amazing opportunity. Chance and Rules collides.




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