Garbage in garbage out. Basing it off of self-reported crowdsourced data (Crunchbase) and is deeply flawed.

Paypal doesn't even appear on the list of employers with more than 5 unicorns from ex employees I can name more off the top of my head: Tesla, Spacex, Palantir, Youtube, Linkedin, Yelp, Yammer, Affirm

AFAIK Musk didn't found Tesla (nitpicking I know): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Founding_(2003%E2%...

My point still stands even if Paypal has one less unicorn.

Founder also doesn't have a universal definition and by your own link the courts decided that he could be called a co-founder, along with the 4 others.

> I can name more off the top of my head

Only spacex here is a unicorn.Everything else has been acquired or listed

And the author seems to talk about billion dollar start-ups, not necessarily just unicorns but only in the past decade.

Most the PayPal Mafia companies were $1B+ Already in 2000s.

> Only spacex here is a unicorn.Everything else has been acquired or listed

I don't know what your point it, almost every company mentioned in this article has been acquired or listed...

> the author seems to talk about billion dollar start-ups, not necessarily just unicorns but only in the past decade.

They list several companies made in 00's; Mulesoft, Dropbox, Uber, Whatsapp... Qualtrics was made in 2002 almost 2 decades ago.

> I don't know what your point it

My apologies. Unicorns are supposed to be private companies with $1B+ valuations

Only spacex is private.

Incredibly pedantic. They were at one point in time. The referenced chart was "Employers with more than 5 unicorns produced" it doesn't stop counting because they get aquired.

Are these really myths? Maybe they were 15 years ago. No one believes them now.

I feel pedanticdirty pointing this out, but something can be a myth AND also not be believed. I bet most myths are like that. That said, your criticism is right on, because you're responding to the implicit synonym to the title: 5 things you believe that aren't true about startups. But the assertion that we believe them is false, and false is bad.

The correct title here would be "5 things that some people at some point in time may have believed that aren't true that we are dusting off for an original content listicle." Which I think has a nice ring to it!

Sure, but we're not talking about Greek Mythology here. In this context, the semantic weight of "myth" tends to be in the sense of misconceptions that many people do believe.

I feel like I already agreed with you in my comment?

I think it was just my pedantic side coming out as well. Probably unnecessary on my part. To be pedantic though, technically all comments here aren't strictly necessary. Though I should probably stop now: non productive hairsplitting is something I have to watch out for as I comment :)

Those myths were not around 15 years ago as well. Take SAP for example.

No one would admit to believing them, but actions speak louder than words and actions tell a different story.

I met with the 645 team, not impressed.

Venture investing 101:

Raise money from pension funds, invest it in founders who have had good exits before. Rinse, repeat.

VC in 2021 is a media and promotion play to get in front of the right founders, and then claim you have a good hiring pipeline or intros to customers. (They mostly don't. 645 especially doesn't.)

645 sounds like Entertainment 720

Too many click bait articles on hackernews now.

Probably bot armies upvoting this junk on HN.

Do we really need more VC parasitic puff pieces? Less of this drivel please, it doesn't contribute anything to HN.

Amazing how ex-googlers create the most unicorns. Is there a reason?

I don't know about "the most" unicors, but they have lots of money and lots of contacts so it seems unsurprising.

None of these seem like popular myths that a lot of people believe.