University of Maryland associate professor Brent Goldfarb on how startups can deal with failure

Poke around and you will find plenty of scary statistics about new businesses—so many that starting a company at all can seem like sheer lunacy.

While research varies widely, we’ve seen reports that as many as 90 percent of tech startups “fail,” and that anywhere from 25 to 75 percent of venture-backed firms do not return capital to their investors. Just last week, Fab.com chief executive officer Jason Goldberg wrote a blog post about the difficulties of turning around his once fast-growing e-commerce startup, which had to cut half its staff as it pivoted away from flash sales toward a broader e-commerce approach.