[ZephyrBlu]

From what I've read, usually the criticism boils down to, "you had an unfair advantage which I don't have". Which makes a lot of sense since that is what startups are built on.

However, it also means that saying things like "take a risk, do the work, put yourself out there" does not make sense for most people because they lack an unfair advantage.

"Here is how I did X" stories are almost always useless for 99% of people because they gloss over unfair advantages like e.g. went to Stanford/Harvard/other, have VC connections, worked at X company, etc. Most people cannot replicate the initial state of these startup stories, let alone the end result.

[BigHatLogan]

I totally agree, but this is less true for people who are already on this forum, who are presumably interested in startups (since this is a forum owned by Y Combinator of all organizations). If this was being posted routinely on the NYTimes Food and Recipes page, I would agree with you wholeheartedly. But that sort of content is, I assume, what people visit this website for. Imagine going to a weightlifting forum and decrying people for sharing their fitness routines, saying that not all people can afford gym memberships, have limbs to lift with, etc. It would be silly.

[ZephyrBlu]

The difference is that the unfair advantages a lot of people who start successful startups have are not easily attainable.

There is no comparison here with a gym membership or having limbs. Both of those are many orders of magnitudes easier than say, getting accepted into Harvard or passing an interview loop at Facebook.

I read very few startup stories that I can actually relate to.

[nickd2001]

To add to this, even in a level playing field where founders lacked rich parents or Harvard, they'd still stand on the shoulders of those who previously developed tech that can now be exploited for profit. e:g dot-com boom was made possible by development of the internet itself with public money. Not to mention individuals' mental ability at certain types of problem solving, which isn't equally distributed. And large element of luck, being in the right place at the right time. So, while hard work and entrepreneurship, so long as done ethically, should be celebrated and rewarded, at the same time people who are "average" should not in any way denigrate themselves. Also, some big successes in startups come at the expense of everyone else. AirBnB being a classic example where some people have benefitted massively but at the expense of neighbourhoods, community, ability of locals to afford housing etc.

[BigHatLogan]

That's fair--I appreciate that. I was being a little flippant with my examples, you're correct.