It's <50%, but chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 292 million.

I'd bet if you picked a promising company (say Series B+ on the breakout list) your likelihood of a positive outcomes is >=10%.

Not high, but very different than lottery tickets.

You'd be betting on the probability of outcomes of choosing startups with successful outcomes, you must see the absurdity!

Regardless, at least a lottery's odds are fixed. For a startup not only do you have a direct impact on the outcome, but there's near-infinite number of internal and external factors that can make a company fail, or, very rarely, succeed.

I think that's one of the big selling points on options: It's a lottery ticket but you are directly capable of affecting your odds. Theoretically if a group of 100 people all feel that way, they should be able to do some amazing things!

Even at seed stage, if you're picking from the same group as Crunchbase is the 2008-2010 cohort had a 30% chance of an exit and a 1% chance of becoming a unicorn. 1 in 100 is much better odds than 1 in 292 million.

Also, you can buy as many lottery tickets as you can afford - you only have so many shots at picking a promising company in your working days.

Those seem equivalent, just with a different limiting resource.