It's shocking how class-based Silicon Valley is. You would assume investors look for innovative ideas and capable people to execute on them, but nope. Ideas don't matter and it turns out when investors say "team" they mean "what club memberships does your team have?"
Silicon Valley investors basically just invest randomly in people based on their membership in a club. It's only because a small percentage of them turn out not to be complete idiots that it works at all. The smartest of the 99% receive no funding, while the entirety of the 1% wealthiest do.
It's an insider's club built around the "top schools" (as they call themselves). You're either in the club or you're an outsider, and only a handful of token outsiders are needed for display purposes.
If you want help in Silicon Valley, you must have either: 1) a rapidly growing business (traction) 2) been accepted into a "top school" (pedigree)
It's not a conspiracy per se, it's just a result of rampant cronyism and nepotism. How do you think investors get their jobs after all...
Some notable examples of non-rich founders, that the rest of us can hope to emulate: Steve Jobs, John Carmack, Palmer Luckey, Linus Torvalds, Larry Ellison.
Silicon Valley investors basically just invest randomly in people based on their membership in a club. It's only because a small percentage of them turn out not to be complete idiots that it works at all. The smartest of the 99% receive no funding, while the entirety of the 1% wealthiest do.
It's an insider's club built around the "top schools" (as they call themselves). You're either in the club or you're an outsider, and only a handful of token outsiders are needed for display purposes.
If you want help in Silicon Valley, you must have either: 1) a rapidly growing business (traction) 2) been accepted into a "top school" (pedigree)
It's not a conspiracy per se, it's just a result of rampant cronyism and nepotism. How do you think investors get their jobs after all...
Some notable examples of non-rich founders, that the rest of us can hope to emulate: Steve Jobs, John Carmack, Palmer Luckey, Linus Torvalds, Larry Ellison.