[webwright]

Two points. There was a non-rich mom in my batch in 2008 (one of the hardest fundraising climates in the last decade). She and her co-founder kicked ass and raised more money than most of the batch.

Point #2: You need to expand your view of meritocracy beyond just product/code. Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy. Imagine it as a multiplier to product merit and,as a founder, you NEED to imagine it as part of your job. In a failure scenario, it absolutely helps turn a zero into a one. But it also helps you hire, sell products, raise money, get press, do bizdev deals, sell companies, etc.

All sorts of other nits I could pick with your comment. Strawmen (really? Does anyone go into YC thinking advice at dinners is the primary value they offer?) and ad hominem attacks (what does Sam's previous company have to do with the merits of his "polemics"?).

Some stats to challenge the "rich white dudes raining gold on each other" theory:

52% of founding teams in the Valley have 1st generation immigrants on them. Just shy of half of the top-ranked venture companies (in case you think all of these immigrant-heavy startups are floundering while rich white guys are winning). Does anyone believe that a meaningful percentage of this group is rich and white? The same study also found that immigrants were key members of the product or management teams in more than 75% of those companies.

[random28345]

> Point #2: You need to expand your view of meritocracy beyond just product/code. Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy.

This is why I also include skin color, culture, gender, and how rich my parents are in my definition of merit. This allows me to honestly believe that all my success is based on merit.

Because nothing says, "merit", like being connected to a small group of very wealthy, very insular people who have the ability to magically bestow success on whoever they please.

[webwright]

This is another strawman argument. Of course there's cronyism, racism, sexism, ageism, etc. And of course we should discourage that. Was I championing any of those things you're attacking?

I'm going to add some stats to my OP.

[amirmc]

You said "You need to expand your view of meritocracy beyond just product/code. Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy."

So yes, you may as well be championing gender, race and background, since you've already redefined 'merit' (in a rather perverse way, imho).

Edit: I see others have also commented on this and the Wikipedia link from another comment is interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy

[webwright]

Can you point me to a definition of merit that I redefined?

I guess I'll try to say it slightly differently to clarify: "it's worth working to expand who you know, how much they like/admire you and how much they want to work with you". This is a skill you can get better at. It's hard work that you need to do. And yes, sadly, this work is certainly easier if you're a 25 year old white guy who went to Stanford.

Do you think people who have worked to have a deep network of folks to sell to, hire from, get introductions from, etc., have done meritorious work? I'm suggesting that how hard you work on this stuff (and how good you get at it) is part of your merit (in the world of startups/entrepreneurship). I certainly don't think it's the only part.

Given that about half of the top venture backed startups are founded by immigrants, I'd say the startup is more meritocratic than a lot of people seem to think. But I'd agree with you that we have a ways to go.

[philh]

You can't simply say that it's meritorious to work hard at whatever it is that makes one succeed. Otherwise any non-randomised culture is meritocratic. For meritocracy to be a meaningful term, the concept of merit needs to be detached from real-world success.

Which isn't to say that network-building isn't meritorious, but you can't use that particular argument for it.

(It's also not relevant how meritocratic SV culture is in other areas.)

[mlichtenstern]

It is fair to say that the YC experience adds value to the companies that participate - even if only by virtue of screening and vetting companies for investors - although that is clearly not the only benefit. For a company that comes in as an idea, and has no revenue / implicit value, the equity (in exchange for funding and value add) makes sense. Companies are not obliged to apply if they don't see value.

[ch4s3]

>Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy

This is a lot like the original definition of meritocracy. A very negative one.[1] If merit is determined solely by the people already in places of power like A16Z on the arbitrary measure of "how much they like/admire you" then it is exactly like and by definition Cronyism.[2] I'm not making a value judgement, but if it quacks like a duck...

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Early_definitions [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism#Concept

[webwright]

That's why I said "part of meritocracy". Which words did I use that made you think that I believed that was most or all of it? I just added a stat to my original comment-- about half of the top venture backed startups have immigrants on the founding team, and 75% in key positions.

[philh]

> Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy. Imagine it as a multiplier to product merit and,as a founder, you NEED to imagine it as part of your job.

Why are you counting these as part of meritocracy, rather than deviations from it?

(If they're sufficiently small deviations, you could still call the overall ecosystem a meritocracy. But then you have a meritocracy with deviations, and enshrining the deviations as part of meritocracy seems like a mistake.)

(I could also see an argument that "meritocracy plus it matters how likeable you are" would be preferable in many ways to just pure meritocracy. But "meritocracy plus it matters who you know" seems like a bad direction to go in.)

[webwright]

"Why are you counting these as part of meritocracy, rather than deviations from it?"

Because hiring, sales, pr, marketing, bizdev and fundraising are all part of startup success... Building and cultivating a good network is hugely valuable for all of that, no?

[philh]

It is in today's culture. In another country, maybe it's hugely valuable to know the correct officials to bribe. That doesn't mean it would be valuable in a meritocratic culture.

The question is whether or not SV is meritocratic; your argument appears to be along the lines of "these things are valuable in SV, so they are part of meritocracy", which is circular.

[ElComradio]

You are caught in a semantics discussion. "Meritocracy" in tech circles _is_ talking about "code/product" as you say. When a company advertises saying "We are a strict meritocracy" they are not saying, "We value code but also your ability to schmooze". Of course things other than code matter, a lot more than code itself, but that isn't how the term is used in the industry.

[ElComradio]

> You need to expand your view of meritocracy beyond just product/code. Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy.

These things may very well be critical to success, but that's not what the term 'meritocracy' actually means as it is commonly used and understood.

"I hired hitwomen to slay all of my competitor's developers. We are now on top because of our company's longstanding culture of meritocracy."

Edit: Meritocracy is not synonymous with success. In the way you are going, all successful startups become meritocracies by virtue of being successful.

[jyu]

Could you please link the study you are citing from? I'd be curious how it'd look after being equity adjusted.

This article looks at only founding teams which get the vast majority of equity. The study found that while less than 1 percent of venture-capital-backed company founders were African American and 12 percent were Asian, 83 percent had a racial composition that was entirely Caucasian.[1] The study mentioned was done by CB Insight from 2010.[2]

This lack of diversity in the founders that receive VC funding may not be that surprising given the lack of diversity of the investors making those choices.[3] And it's not too hard to find other sources that say there is a lack of diversity at the top.[4]

[1] http://elitedaily.com/money/venture-capitalists-still-overwh...

[2]http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/data-race-gender-silicon-vall...

[3] http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/05/14/swisher-wadhw...

[4] http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646...

[webwright]

I should've dug it up originally. My bad: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-small-business/post/i...

[jules]

> Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy.

Ehhh, that's the textbook definition of cronyism, the opposite of meritocracy.