Jon just nailed the problem in the head: frankly I'm tired of hearing rich kids talking about how easy it is just to leave everything you are doing and make a startup, and to add insult to injury the new buzzword is to say that you don't even need an idea.
Yeah sure you can leave your job or college and just start throwing darts at post-its to come up with an app idea if you have a rich dad who is willing to bankroll your adventure in the Bay Area. You need at least $36k a year just to rent a decent flat in that place, some families, not just people but actual families, live on less than that in this country.
I had friends on highschool who had tremendous hacker potential, but they also had problems, REAL problems like bad health and a poor family. Most of them are quite happy right now working for the evil corporations that pay them those $75k a year salaries that the rich kids laugh at. They depend on company healthcare and can't even dream to let that and their paychecks go just to give startups a try.
And that is just one side of the problem, the other is the facade of equal opportunities in startups, the idea that everyone applying to YC or other incubators is in the same level.
The social network movie made a lot of generic hacker culture statements but it forgot to mention that the zuck had a private programming tutor paid by his parents. Seriously, how many of you here had parents who could afford that? I tried to hire a Java tutor when I was in highschool and it was incredibly expensive, more than hiring several tutors for most of my school subjects.
I have met entrepreneurs with amazing companies that didn't get into YC, yet the guys from diaspora, the same guys who burned through a quarter of a million and did next to nothing, they got in, and with what? a meme app, because that's important, another memegenerator clone.
I'm using a throwaway account because I know this is going to be downvoted to hell, many of these rich kids make an overwhelming clique in HN and other sites, and they don't like when it when someone speaks up and shatters their BS.
The irony here is that this country is fast becoming like the third world hellholes that immigrant entrepreneurs where escaping from. The stories you hear from those places are becoming eerily familiar: a guy from South America told me how over there all entrepreneurs are rich kids, legacies from generations of crony capitalism and favoritism. Practically none are coders or hustlers, they get their parents to bankroll a clone a cookie-cutter startup and take advantage of the wage slave condition of engineers over there, after all what are those poor souls going to do? they can't afford to make a startup and don't have any connections to investors, so what is left for them? get a visa and come here? nice try...
And that is what America is becoming, a place not of opportunity but of class lockdown, social mobility is at an all-time low and everywhere you hear pundits whose idea of equality in America is actually that of Sweden's, which ironically is a socialist country.
But go ahead, keep believing we are all in the same league, by all means try to defeat my point by saying how you help other less fortunate entrepreneurs with your link-bait blog full of empty advice, keep saying that all of us who are not in the same position than you are a bunch of envious and resentful pricks, or that you are where you are right now because you worked for it when actually you are where you are right now because you were half the way ahead to being with.
Yeah sure you can leave your job or college and just start throwing darts at post-its to come up with an app idea if you have a rich dad who is willing to bankroll your adventure in the Bay Area. You need at least $36k a year just to rent a decent flat in that place, some families, not just people but actual families, live on less than that in this country.
I had friends on highschool who had tremendous hacker potential, but they also had problems, REAL problems like bad health and a poor family. Most of them are quite happy right now working for the evil corporations that pay them those $75k a year salaries that the rich kids laugh at. They depend on company healthcare and can't even dream to let that and their paychecks go just to give startups a try.
And that is just one side of the problem, the other is the facade of equal opportunities in startups, the idea that everyone applying to YC or other incubators is in the same level.
The social network movie made a lot of generic hacker culture statements but it forgot to mention that the zuck had a private programming tutor paid by his parents. Seriously, how many of you here had parents who could afford that? I tried to hire a Java tutor when I was in highschool and it was incredibly expensive, more than hiring several tutors for most of my school subjects.
I have met entrepreneurs with amazing companies that didn't get into YC, yet the guys from diaspora, the same guys who burned through a quarter of a million and did next to nothing, they got in, and with what? a meme app, because that's important, another memegenerator clone.
I'm using a throwaway account because I know this is going to be downvoted to hell, many of these rich kids make an overwhelming clique in HN and other sites, and they don't like when it when someone speaks up and shatters their BS.
The irony here is that this country is fast becoming like the third world hellholes that immigrant entrepreneurs where escaping from. The stories you hear from those places are becoming eerily familiar: a guy from South America told me how over there all entrepreneurs are rich kids, legacies from generations of crony capitalism and favoritism. Practically none are coders or hustlers, they get their parents to bankroll a clone a cookie-cutter startup and take advantage of the wage slave condition of engineers over there, after all what are those poor souls going to do? they can't afford to make a startup and don't have any connections to investors, so what is left for them? get a visa and come here? nice try...
And that is what America is becoming, a place not of opportunity but of class lockdown, social mobility is at an all-time low and everywhere you hear pundits whose idea of equality in America is actually that of Sweden's, which ironically is a socialist country.
But go ahead, keep believing we are all in the same league, by all means try to defeat my point by saying how you help other less fortunate entrepreneurs with your link-bait blog full of empty advice, keep saying that all of us who are not in the same position than you are a bunch of envious and resentful pricks, or that you are where you are right now because you worked for it when actually you are where you are right now because you were half the way ahead to being with.