[nostrademons]

I don't know the family situation of the AirBnB founders personally, but Wikipedia says both of them were social workers, which isn't exactly what most people would consider a rich kid background.

I'm always a bit perplexed by the people who come out of the woodwork to say that startups are a rich kid's game, though. What's the family background of folks on this site? I understand that there's a wide variety of socioeconomic statuses on the Internet, and that wealth is relative and 50% of Americans have zero in savings. But is there actually a huge HN population whose families are worse-off than social workers (Brian Chesky), seed & clothing factory workers (Marc Andreesen), mechanics (Steve Jobs), engineers (Steve Wozniak), college professors (Larry Page), or refugees (Sergey Brin, Jan Koum)?

I come from a single-earner (elementary school teacher) family, and usually think of myself as smack in the middle of the socioeconomic spectrum. I could and did move back home after college, but then, a lot of children also have that privilege. Do the demographics of HN skew so much poorer that most folks here do not have parental households they could go back to?

[Karrot_Kream]

- Chesky: Working for 4 years before founding AirBnB.

- Andreesen: Dual-income family, though details about his parents are scant.

- Jobs: Dual income family at a time when the vast majority of families had a single income.

- Wozniak: Engineers make a lot of money.

- Page: Professors do too

- Brin: Father is professor at University of Maryland, Mother is a researcher at NASA's Goddard.

- Koum: Had been working in industry for 15 years before starting his own company.

So yes, most people in the US have backgrounds much worse than this.

[imesh]

Yeah, your parents don't need to even be middle class in order for you to move back in with your parents, your parents just need to exist and be willing to let you back. In fact loads of poor people live with their parents...