Nobody cares - a fundamental principle for startup socialites

Re:Nobody cares - a fundamental principle for startup social... by sh1mmer on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @10:40AM (#741282)

80% of businesses fail

Wasn't there an article on HN a couple months back showing this to be a myth?

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Re:Nobody cares - a fundamental principle for startup social... by akronim on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @11:22AM (#741359)

The stat is meaningless anyway without some sort of timeframe.

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Re:Nobody cares - a fundamental principle for startup social... by rawr on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @12:25PM (#741508)

I mean, technically it has meaning even without a restricted time frame. Some nonzero percentage of all businesses ever started have never failed.

That being said, it's nothing like 20% so clearly there is an implicit time frame.

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Re:Nobody cares - a fundamental principle for startup social... by jodrellblank on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @02:21PM (#741771)

No known business has lasted longer than 1,428 years:

http://www.dailynugget.com/2007/04/worlds-oldest-business-cl...

Some nonzero percentage of all businesses ever started have not failed yet.

Although if I guess what the parent comment is thinking of correctly, there was a piece on HN fairly recently about how businesses that were doing well but closed were counted as 'failures'. E.g. the owner retired and closed, the owner got ill and closed, the owner sold up and the business was merged into another before it was running for 5 years, etc.

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