While the headline is true, I think the important factors to consider are: - Doing something that has a high probability of failure is also likely something th

While the headline is true, I think the important factors to consider are: - Doing something that has a high probability of failure is also likely something that is highly leveraged, meaning that if it does not fail the person doing it is much better off than if he/she had chosen a less risky alternative. - Sadly, VC selection processes (including YC) are heavily biased toward wealth signals such as ivy league enrollment. Attendance at the ivies is strongly dominated by one factor alone, which is the wealth of one's parents. - The reason YC and others bias toward ivies and wealthy parents is not because it doesn't work. Raising an angel round and being able to truly give a startup 100% of one's life energy is something that is much easier when you have parents willing to support it financially and possibly via networking connections with other wealthy family members. - The interesting statistic would be this: Of all the rounds YC has participated in, how many have been participated in by relatives of the founder. My guess is that this number is over 80%. - But on the other hand, being rich increases the chances that a kid will have received a top quality education and will be prepared to face the many challenges and blows to the ego that doing a startup can entail, and will be friends with others who can become key hires because they too had a top quality education. - Ironically, dropping out of college makes even more sense when your K-12 education was so good that you realize that you already have the tools needed to pursue higher goals. - The punchline is that in an ideal world we'd all be rich and have the good education, supportive family, and ability to take risks that rich kids do. So the descriptive fact that many entrepreneurs happen to be rich is along the same lines as the descriptive fact that many well-educated people happen to have had well-off upbringings. Why bother achieving wealth if it can't buy these kinds of very obvious and very useful luxuries?