Well there are a lot more types of successful company than there are companies that are successful investments from outsiders. A high school friend of mine has a successful house painting business that does millions of dollars per year but he grew it the old fashioned way by bootstrapping and I don’t think it would have ever been a viable investment candidate.
The problem with anecdotes about successful friends, is that you don't know how many unsuccessful friends you had (time and money invested for no return), and you don't know the volatility of those investments (extra returns required for extra risk). E.G. VC funds have huge volatility and aim for 20% p.a. return for LP, which implies that individual founders have higher volatility and need higher returns than that to cover opportunity costs.
The common rule of thumb is that 90% of small businesses fail within 10 years.
I agree that for founders that take VC investment, the expectations of return need to be even higher than VC due to: higher volatility, extreme lack of diversification, and not getting preferential stock (must beat $invested or founders get $0 back).
