[xp84]

A lot of comments focus on examining who gets their startups funded, so looking at founders or maybe the lucky few early staff who get super rich from an IPO.

I’m thinking about the effect on smoothing the other end of the wealth curve, pulling people out of poverty or near-poverty into the middle class and upper middle class.

I’m a complete nobody, didn’t go to a notable school, have zero family connections, and I’ve been grazing at the VC trough by working for startups the majority of my career. Without a startup ecosystem, I would probably be hanging Wi-Fi access points or building PCs at Best Buy. There are thousands like me.

I think without the VC idea, a few rich people would still start new companies, but they’d be less fit due to so much less competition. Neat prototypes of ideas like we see all the time on HN wouldn’t usually be able to get big enough to threaten the incumbents unless they were lucky enough to be dreamed up by a nepo baby.