There are many articles these days about young startups raising tons of money. There is also an increasing number of articles about well-funded startups suddenly struggling or shutting down. Every time a new story comes out, there’s a chorus of comments about how a failing company was doomed from the start, or how the VCs investing at huge valuations are dumb, or how the founders of a company don’t know what they’re doing. Sometimes these comments are accurate, but much of the time they’re ill-informed. These comments also reveal two common biases: the tendency to underestimate others (and overestimate oneself), and the tendency to draw conclusions from present data without considering what data might be missing. These are dangerous biases – especially when used by founders to hastily dismiss the quality of their competition.