But they aren&#x27;t a lottery.  Startups (and business in general) is about <i>unfair advantages</i> - knowing information that other people don&#x27;t, and acting on that knowledge.<p>As a founder, your job is to find your unfair advantage and execute on it.  Startups that successfully find a valuable secret and exploit it become worth billions.  Startups that have no such advantage usually die.<p>I thought the article was getting at this, but it seems like a lot of the folks here missed it.  Twitch succeeded because, as justin.tv, they were in a position to notice rising demand for gaming livestreams.  And then when they did, they executed against it very effectively - look at Emmett&#x27;s user interview lecture for how they systematically gathered feedback from <i>prospective</i> users to convert them to current users. [1]<p>That&#x27;s what Justin&#x27;s talking about when he says &quot;Trust your metrics and your growth.&quot;  They had an information advantage over VCs - there was very good reason for believing VCs were ignorant there, because in this case, they were.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clip.mn&#x2F;video&#x2F;yt-qAws7eXItMk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clip.mn&#x2F;video&#x2F;yt-qAws7eXItMk</a>