[galago]

“As a result, barriers to entry that have stood for decades are melting away. Every incumbent business is vulnerable to competition and disruption.”

Upper middle class dudes from elite academic institutions create businesses. What's the new thing? Maybe I'm misstating this and I'm just going to piss away what few points I have less, but hasn't business always been this way?

Railroads killed the stagecoach, the lightbulb killed gas lamps, Craigslist killed the newspapers. Amazon might well kill Google, but if they do, its not necessarily a new thing.

[leoc]

He's talking about the prospects of businesses taking on incumbent businesses, not the chances for individuals. Incumbents like the regulated taxi industry or Borders Books don't just roll over for new challengers no matter where the new firm's CEO went to college.

[ethnomusicolog]

Yes, but the demographic constituency who can play the game is expanding. It's getting easier to hack your socio-economic status.

[galago]

The guys that started Google came from Stanford, the Facebook guy, Harvard. The Dropbox guys, MIT. Is there someone who went to Bunker Hill Community College or its many equivaltents who was able create a majorly disruptive business? I don't want to sound like Reddit, but link to something.

[ethnomusicolog]

I am not trying to argue how the game is played. But take the google founder. Here is the son of a computer science academic migrant, who kind of hacked his way into corporate power, without needing to show all the ruthlessnes of the past centuries titans. Now you could say that he was more privileged than your average joe. And It's true. But he is less privileged that you usually needed to be to attaign that level of success. It's true of him, true of Larry Ellison, and countless untold stories. And with them, of all the people they brought into the adventure. Te be fair, It has always been true that self-made giant could come from any avenue of life. The difference is that it has never been so well documented.

[rmsaksida]

Jan Koum, Whatsapp founder, is an example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Koum

[balazsdavid987]

Tsssh, please don't wake me up from my startup dreams! But you are right, it happens very rarely that an individual creates a billion-dollar disruptive sexy cool company without the specific kind of socio-eoconomic background you mentioned. On the other hand, one can live a perfectly fine life off a small business with a local scope and - I think - that's not in the unreachable zone unless you are starting from the other extreme side of the society.