[firefax]

What skills? I've met several.

Most of them got into a prestigious school on legacy, paid for by wealthy parents. Many were above average IQ, but by no means geniuses. They had access to computers earlier than others, due to said affluence. They seem unable or unwilling to comprehend they're overwhelmingly on average, "nepo babies" to steal a term from the world of entertainment.

[cm11]

I think it's private schools in general. Even those from second and third tier ones, which can filter more by means than the elite ones, find themselves atop companies. It's the natural access and the natural ability to socialize with other private school personalities. Their definition of capable leader is a particular type of leader. They can make and take jokes, but particular types of jokes. They hide each other's shortcomings, insecurities, guilt whereas people from other backgrounds, even people they like and think highly of, tend to serve as a mirror.

Getting funding is a value add, but I agree calling it "skill" misses most of what makes someone "good" at it. We've built things to overwhelmingly rely on funding gated by other private school people though. It would be nice if we could have that person with access pitching without them also being in charge of running a company, product development, or managing people. But then it would require the same of the investors. The investors would then need to evaluate products and ideas and markets. And the markets would have to reward that. Things would need to be different.

[firefax]

>I think it's private schools in general.

I think CS is a little unusual in that places like Berkley are ranked highly. (Interestingly, Harvard has a rather low CS rank and Zuck was in the process of transferring to psych because he can't handle anything quant, but due to FERPA no one will call him out even as he repeatedly steps outside the law)

>Getting funding is a value add, but I agree calling it "skill" misses most of what makes someone "good" at it. We've built things to overwhelmingly rely on funding gated by other private school people though.

I think part of the issue is that a big chunk of startups are straight up grift. My complaints about gatekeeping aside, I think if I had a legitimately good idea I could either submit to yCombinator or talk to contacts who've cashed in stock and get investors.

That's mostly due to the fact I'm well known for valuing authenticity though and my personal brand is such that folks would take my proposal seriously.

I met a LOT of people who went to places like Stanford who basically... they always meet the metrics, at the expense of all else.

Anyways, I think in general we try to generate too many "startups" when we're really striving for small businesses.

But because the funding is the truly difficult part, we hyperfocus on that.

Meanwhile, I've seen plenty of startup ideas that while benefiting from the Ycombinator social network, have initial costs such that you could hit up a few rich friends who've known you a while with a solid business plan and get bootstrapped... but that would require domain knowledge and the respect of your peers, two things many founders lack ;-)

[everdrive]

Quite frankly speaking and acting as if you are from the upper crust is itself a criteria for success. It might be fine to say that this is not a skill, but people can definitely tell and they select for it.

I spent most of my time in government, and I was quite shocked in private industry how enthusiastically nearly everyone had taken to the class divide. It was a bit like A Brave New World. Even when resenting it, the lower class totally bought into the mythos of the upper class. It was very clear I would never be an executive at my company, but at the same time, my particular company was riddled with incompetent and corrupt executives.

I didn't feel or sound like one of them, and I refused to lie or bullshit. And every one of them could tell, and it forever marked me as an outsider.