# Proof: The superior predictor of venture success is founder pedigree from elite universities rather than market size or product traction.

- **Generated:** 2026-04-08
- **Verdict:** UNDETERMINED
- **Audit trail:** [proof_audit.md](proof_audit.md) | [proof.py](proof.py)

## Key Findings

- No controlled study was found showing that founder pedigree predicts venture success better than **both** market size and product traction simultaneously.
- An arXiv/YC study found educational credentials statistically insignificant, explaining **less than 4%** of startup funding variation after controlling for other factors.
- Beta Boom analysis found top-10 university alumni receive **51% of VC investment** but produce only **35% of unicorns** — indicating pedigree predicts VC access more than actual outcomes.
- CB Insights' repeated post-mortem analysis of startup failures identifies "no market need" (35–42%) as the top cause — not founder background. This directly implicates market size and traction as the dominant predictors of failure.
- One source (First Round Capital, 2015) found 220% outperformance among Ivy/MIT/Stanford founders within their own portfolio, but this is subject to selection bias and does not compare pedigree against traction or market size as competing predictors.

## Claim Interpretation

**Natural language:** The superior predictor of venture success is founder pedigree from elite universities rather than market size or product traction.

**Formal interpretation:** "Superior predictor" is operationalized as having higher predictive validity — stronger correlation with or causal contribution to successful venture outcomes (e.g., exit value, unicorn status, fund returns) — compared to both market size and product traction as competing predictors. The claim requires pedigree to outperform both alternatives, not just one. "Elite universities" means Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, and equivalent. "Product traction" means demonstrable customer adoption, revenue, or usage growth. For the claim to be PROVED, empirical research would need to show that pedigree independently predicts success better than market size and traction across multiple studies.

**Threshold:** 3 independent confirming sources.

## Evidence Summary

| ID | Fact | Source |
|----|------|--------|
| B1 | Credentials explain <4% of funding variation | arXiv/YC study |
| B2 | Pedigree predicts VC access, not unicorn outcomes | Beta Boom analysis |
| B3 | Product-market fit failure is #1 startup cause | CB Insights post-mortems |
| B4 | Management team ranked #1 by VCs, but pedigree not isolated | Gompers et al. (2010) |

All four facts are adversarial to the claim — no confirming sources were found.

## Proof Logic

### Main claim — Pedigree predicts success better than both market size and traction

- **Required confirming sources:** 3
- **Confirmed:** 0
- **Holds:** No

The research landscape shows the opposite pattern: studies examining pedigree as a predictor consistently find it explains little variance in outcomes, and separate bodies of work identify market fit and traction as the dominant factors.

## Adversarial Checks

### Check 1 — arXiv/YC study: credentials explain <4% of startup funding variation

**Finding:** arXiv preprint using Y Combinator portfolio data found educational credentials statistically insignificant and explaining less than 4% of funding variation after controlling for other founder and company characteristics. This directly contradicts the "superior predictor" claim — a predictor that accounts for under 4% of variance is, by definition, not the superior predictor.

**Breaks proof:** Yes

### Check 2 — Beta Boom: pedigree over-predicts funding relative to unicorn outcomes

**Finding:** Beta Boom analysis found top-10 university alumni receive 51% of VC investment but produce only 35% of unicorns. This gap — 51% of capital flowing to 35% of successful outcomes — suggests pedigree is a stronger predictor of VC access (signaling bias and network effects) than of actual startup success. The metric that pedigree actually predicts is investor behavior, not venture outcomes.

**Breaks proof:** Yes

### Check 3 — CB Insights: product-market fit failure is the #1 startup killer

**Finding:** CB Insights' "Top Reasons Startups Fail" analysis (repeatedly updated with hundreds of startup post-mortems) consistently finds "no market need" (35–42%) and "ran out of cash/no product-market fit" as the dominant failure causes. These are direct measures of market size and traction — not founder pedigree. If pedigree were the superior predictor of success, its absence would show up as the primary failure cause. It does not.

**Breaks proof:** Yes

### Check 4 — Gompers et al.: VCs rank management team highest, but pedigree is not isolated

**Finding:** Gompers, Kovner, Lerner, Scharfstein (2010, Harvard) surveyed VC criteria: management team ranked most important (95%), market at 68%, product at 74%. However, "management team" in this context means execution capability and domain expertise — not university pedigree specifically. The paper does not isolate elite university attendance as a predictor vs. market size or traction. This source cannot confirm the claim as stated.

**Breaks proof:** Yes (does not confirm pedigree specifically)

### Check 5 — First Round Capital: Ivy/MIT/Stanford founders showed 220% outperformance

**Finding:** First Round Capital (2015) analyzed their own portfolio and found Ivy/MIT/Stanford founders showed 220% outperformance relative to non-elite-university founders. However: (1) this is within a single VC firm's curated portfolio, creating selection bias and conflict of interest; (2) the analysis does not compare pedigree against traction or market size as competing predictors; (3) one VC firm's portfolio is not a population-level study. This source does not satisfy the "superior to both market size and traction" requirement.

**Breaks proof:** No (but does not confirm either)

## Conclusion

**Verdict: UNDETERMINED.**

Research does not support founder pedigree as the "superior" predictor compared to both market size and product traction. Multiple studies find that pedigree explains little variance in venture outcomes, that it predicts VC access more than actual success, and that product-market fit and market size are the dominant factors in startup failure. No controlled study showing pedigree outperforms both traction and market size was found. The claim is UNDETERMINED due to the absence of confirming evidence and the presence of multiple lines of contradictory evidence. It is not DISPROVED because the contradictory evidence is imperfect (observational studies, potential confounds) and one portfolio-level analysis suggests a pedigree signal in at least one curated dataset.
