Of course, this is not meant to be predictive but rather meant to dispel the notion that a strong negative correlation exists between these two variables.

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/09/maximizing-runway-can-minimi...

Fred talks about he defines success here - http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/06/how-we-measure-success.html

"We are financial investors and we do want to see our portfolio companies become valuable."

More specifically, how do you think USV and Fred define success? Fred says that financial returns (hence exits) are important on his own btw [1]

[1] http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/06/how-we-measure-success.html

Second, your analysis doesn't work without including zeroes. Pretend all the failures raised a lot of money. Your line would point down.

Your analysis was marginal and you're not taking the feedback very well.

You are right that the line would point down if all failures raised a lot of money at the seed/Series A stage, but that's not the case. This intuitively makes sense as only a small select group of companies/founders can raise large initial rounds (serial entrepreneur, amazing traction, etc) and most will raise smaller sums.

But thx for comment. Update with zeros coming soon.

Of course, one can argue that startups should be not be in it for the exit, but when you take VC money, that is what you are signing up for.

Fred talks about he defines success here - http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/06/how-we-measure-success.html

"We are financial investors and we do want to see our portfolio companies become valuable."

Say the startups with the highest (or lowest) funding all die before exiting -- that's a really important thing to know. That'd affect the regression outcomes (not to mention the decision-making process of everyone involved.)