I believe that most advice on choosing a startup to work for is wrong. Early employees at wildly successful startups suggest you assume the value of your equity is zero (https://twitter.com/rabois/status/679722946919677952) and instead optimize for how much you can learn (https://triplebyte.com/blog/interview-with-gmail-creator-and-y-combinator-partner-paul-buchheit). In this post I'll argue that evaluating how likely a startup is to succeed should actually be the most important factor in your decision to join one. As a former partner at Y Combinator, I know a lot about how investors do thi...