Wow. It isn’t often that I drop everything after I read an article and feel compelled to respond. But I was dumbstruck when I read this piece in the Washington Post.
It was titled: Five myths about entrepreneurs. In around 1000 words, the author went on to trash the National Venture Capital Association, Peter Thiel, Jason Calacanis and Fred Wilson, using “scientific research” to try to prove them wrong.
This just goes to show why academics don’t “get” entrepreneurs, don’t understand job creation and don’t make good VCs. It also proves that academics looking to make headlines can do so by using bogus statistics and misleading phrases.
So how did he get this so-called research SO wrong and backwards? I mean, his conclusions are mind-boggling in their naiveté. In a nutshell, the author confuses average with great. He looks at quantity instead of quality. And in doing so he reaches irrelevant and misleading conclusions. I downloaded the study and read it. You too can do so here. Part of the problem is that the author surveyed “549 company founders across a dozen fast-growth industries.” But nowhere could I find a list of the companies or founders surveyed. I am betting that they include no $100B companies, no $10B companies, no $1B companies, and probably few $100M companies. But perhaps he could prove me wrong. Again, his research looked at quantity, but I can’t tell if it included “quality” companies.
To read the full, original article click on this link: peHUB » Worst Analysis of Entrepreneurship and VCs EVER!
Author:John Backus
