[wmp56]

I'm afraid I have to disagree. The key ingredient is unusually high IQ, not money. If I had a choice between being born with a very high IQ or in a moderately wealthy family (10s of millions), I'd choose the 1st without thinking. The family money rather reduce chances of striking success because they make people lazy from childhood. A 12 month trip to SV gives exactly nothing by itself. We could randomly select 1000 college grads, give them 100k and send them to SV for 1 year. The success rate will be 0.0%. What really helps on the SV path is (1) very high intelligence and (2) real industry experience. If you have the former, you can get the latter by joining one of the few known firms and spend there a decade. Then use your savings and connections to try your own idea. I don't see how family money help to skip that decade of experience or how they help to become smart.