I think one myth that exists in both American culture and startups in particular is that you can "make it" if you just have the skills and the chutzpah.
Without some system that isn't inherently about 'move fast, big returns, oh and also it really helps if you're a young man with a Stanford connection and a way to get through the period of time where you have no income' then we get the technology that results from that. And the 'system' reflects a funding situation where big investors, often having 'good' missions (the LPs I mean) look to folks from SV VC to pattern-match their way into high returns.
If you are building a business and it's a "good business" that can be profitable early then great, but you will be stuck at scale (or in almost anything consumer-facing in tech) with only the companies willing to maximally exploit the systems that I think we know are extractive and unsustainable.
Like with most systems problems, it's hard to know what the 'answer' is- if you buy into this line of thinking- but I hope we'll start trying new ways to approach the problem, whether it's by putting some pressure on the LPs or by making it easier to crowdfund or by some more radical means...
Without some system that isn't inherently about 'move fast, big returns, oh and also it really helps if you're a young man with a Stanford connection and a way to get through the period of time where you have no income' then we get the technology that results from that. And the 'system' reflects a funding situation where big investors, often having 'good' missions (the LPs I mean) look to folks from SV VC to pattern-match their way into high returns.
If you are building a business and it's a "good business" that can be profitable early then great, but you will be stuck at scale (or in almost anything consumer-facing in tech) with only the companies willing to maximally exploit the systems that I think we know are extractive and unsustainable.
Like with most systems problems, it's hard to know what the 'answer' is- if you buy into this line of thinking- but I hope we'll start trying new ways to approach the problem, whether it's by putting some pressure on the LPs or by making it easier to crowdfund or by some more radical means...