[brudgers]

"Is the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates filling in Y Combinator's application form right now, or are they taking the independent route?"

YC can reproduce the career arc of Steve Jobs, but not Bill Gates. Until the IPO Microsoft didn't sell stock to outside investors in significant quantities. By essentially bootstrapping, Gates and Allen were able to bring Ballmer on board with 8% equity at a point when outside investors would be eyeing exit in a VC backed company.

This is in contrast with Jobs, who lost control of Apple by accepting outside money. On the other hand, having grown up in Silicon Valley, Jobs would not have needed the sort of guidance through the startup landscape that YC provides relative to a hacker from Topeka - i.e. Jobs was sophisticated enough to raise money for Apple based upon his social connections within Silicon Valley.

[wissler]

But Jobs had to be lucky enough for Apple to nearly go bankrupt so they would entertain having him return and turn them around. This cosmically lucky event is not very reproducible.

[kalininalex]

After Apple, Jobs didn't sit on his hands, but went on to found two companies - Pixar and NEXT. Pixar alone would have made him famous, again. And, NEXT assured his return to Apple, because of Apple's failure to innovate in early 90s and the need of something, anything to restart its OS line. NEXT and Jobs were their best bets.

Even without Apple Jobs would have accomplished many things. That's just the kind of person he was. So, luck has nothing to do with this.

[cjkarr]

Just a quibble, but Jobs purchased what became Pixar from George Lucas. Saying that he founded it is a bit of a stretch -- he pretty much just bankrolled it until it finally found its niche with "Toy Story". Alan Deutschman's "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" draws a sharp contrast between Jobs' roles at the two companies:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Coming-Steve-Jobs/dp/076790...

[brudgers]

Luck has everything to do with it.

If Jobs and Woz had been born in Jackson, Mississippi, they would not have known much about phreaking, attended Home Brew Computer club meetings, or known HP employees with disposable income to spend on the Apple I.

[scott_s]

This recent submission is quite relevant: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4065233

[wissler]

Luck has everything to do with him returning to Apple, which is what I was talking about.

Yes, he would have been a successful person regardless. Indeed, he was a successful person already. But he was very lucky to be allowed back at Apple.

[brudgers]

Because at the time, Jobs was still hanging around in Silicon Valley, he was the ideal candidate - i.e. cheap, and available.