[timr]

I don't think a private high school education is necessarily universal, but in my experience a lot of founders in the valley are from wealthy (or at least, extremely upper-middle-class) backgrounds. You rarely see founders who put themselves through college by working at pizza joints -- those dudes are working for the guys who went to Harvard via trust fund.

It's a little-discussed phenomena amongst the yammering classes, but a lot of startup founders have nothing to lose but pride.