Quote from: joulion86 on August 06, 2018, 02:12:55 PM

But here is the thing, even a completely professional page with awesome support and a great use is still no guarantee for a big return on your investment. You can compare it with real world businesses: 95% of businesses go broke in the first year, 99% do not survive the first 5 years..

This is a very good point. New investors don't realize how hard it is to make a business work. I'm not sure the failure numbers you list are right; it depends largely on the industry (for example, fast food shops are easier to keep open than new oil mining ventures). However, the failure rate is high. The number I hear is 8 out of 10 new businesses fail. That's only a 20% success rate, which is still pretty low.

There is something else to consider. Business that are destined to be successful generally don't need a lot of funding. If the business has something of real value then they can turn that into cash and grow the business. This is especially true of web based startups, because everything is just digital information. It used to be that starting a business required a big outlay for building space, equipment, employees, licenses etc. at a minimum. Now everything needed to serve potential customers can be programmed.

The moral of the story is be vary wary of things that sound too good to be true. I'll give one last piece of advice, and this is something professional investors (eg Angels and VCs) look for: see if the business has traction. A key to investing is lowering the chance the project you invest in will fail. The best way to do that is seeing if the project has something going for it, even if small. When a team promises the moon but only offers a whitepaper that's probably a good indicator they will not be around.