Survivorship bias is a subtle cognitive bias that appears more often than you might think. Places where I’ve seen it:
- Joining a startup (think of early Amazon or Google employees)
- Investing in a startup (what if you bought some early Microsoft shares)
- Working with a new technology (when it takes off, you’ll be far ahead of everyone else)
- Buying a house in a new development/neighborhood (home value will be so high when you sell)
None of these are wrong, and any of them might work out. But they are only focusing on the survivors. Something like 95% of all startups fail, and you can’t tell which ones will succeed before hand.
Comparing new cases only to the survivors from previous rounds is dangerous.