This comparison is really broken:<p>- Airlines and venture backed startups have vastly different goals.  Flights are supposed to, above all things, be predictable.  Crashing is not acceptable.  If startups were predictable, there would be no reason for venture capital to exist.<p>- This is talking about an average over the whole of an industry, venture capital, in which the average, and indeed most of the above average firms are dysfunctional -- they don't make money.  Not just, you know, 51%, like &#62; 90%.  So being better than average can still mean that you're completely economically ineffective.  So the right question isn't, "What makes you better than average?" but "What makes you one of the few that is even functional?"