Can you still choose startups?

First, you must observe the timing—the broader era and market context.

The odds of a startup surviving vary wildly depending on when you join an early-stage company. You can’t control it, nor can the founder. It’s dictated by the hot-and-cold cycles of the venture capital market. The biggest factor affecting a startup’s survival rate is how easy or hard it is to raise capital. If the company can’t make money but can keep finding new investors to burn through cash, or if larger acquirers step in when fundraising stalls, the entrepreneurial environment is relatively favorable.

Conversely, if inability to generate revenue means closing shop, the environment is much tougher.

Everyone wants stability—so where does that stability come from? When supply and demand are out of balance, someone inevitably has to...

...choose instability.

At those moments, if these fragile startups and early-stage companies are still extremely selective about whom they hire, what might that indicate? A relatively higher probability of survival. Take a Tsinghua or Peking University grad: they can always land a stable job at a big corp. Yet they opt for a small startup—one where nearly everyone else is their alum, with an average C9 league background.

One person making a silly choice is plausible. How likely is a collective silly choice?

The single best indicator when betting on a startup? Go visit the office. Look at who currently works there and where they graduated from. If over 80% of the team come from top-tier schools, you can reasonably assume that startup has a significantly higher survival probability than the one down the street where fewer than 20% of employees attended elite universities.