Not too long ago, founders were often seen as mere grist for Silicon Valley VC mills - essential but hardly most vital to a startup's success. This has changed.

Not too long ago, founders were often seen as mere grist for Silicon Valley VC mills - essential but hardly most vital to a startup's success. This has changed. Founders today have significant control of their company’s formation and development. They no longer have to locate in the Valley but can operate from almost anywhere worldwide. The web has given them vast amount of knowledge about how things work, where they were once relegated to trying to pick up scraps around the water cooler. The infrastructure build-out has significantly reduced their capital needs, where they once routinely needed immediate large funding just to launch their basic product. The desktop PC is no longer a primary software development platform, where it once dominated and defined the range of startup opportunities available. The barriers are down, and there is much more room for sheer drive and talent to hold sway and define the path to success. The dark side has always been there, as noted in this fine piece, and it will remain - doing startups does "suck" if one compares it to conventional ways of making a living but that is why the rewards can be large as well. But demographic diversity is today quite pronounced in terms of racial, ethnic, and cultural mix (the white males among the founders I work with are today a distinct minority). Only on the gender side does it continue to lag. On that side, I am not sure how much will change in the near term. Given the otherwise radical changes that have occurred, whatever is causing this state of things to persist must be pretty deeply ingrained.