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Cute title but this is actually just an extension of “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer”. Facebook had TIME to be a toy because Mark Zuckerberg had

Cute title but this is actually just an extension of “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer”. Facebook had TIME to be a toy because Mark Zuckerberg had a rich family, and plenty of skills to get a job if it didn’t work out. “Making a toy” is only possible with the resources of money and time. People who need to make money need to focus earlier on making money, which stunts growth in the long run. This is true not only for startups but for individuals, and in nature as a whole. It often feels like 99% of “startup wisdom” comes down to “have a rich family that supported you emotionally and then paid for your college, and then let you start a company at their house for free” YC should give a talk at some underprivileged schools in crime-ridden areas to tell people to “just make toys for like 9 years guys”

brucephillips 9y ago
As much as I disagree with his thesis here, the entire point of it is that YC wants to and does fund toy companies. So they're trying to solve the exact problem you're railing against.
- loorinm 9y ago
  So funding toy companies (IE Mark Zuckerberg and other well-off white men) is solving the problem of only funding Mark Zuckerberg and other well-off white men?
  - encoderer 9y ago
    So nothing is worthwhile if it doesn’t also solve inequality? Tall order.
    - loorinm 9y ago
      I am directly responding to above person’s claim that this practice by YC is somehow solving the very problem it is creating. At no point did I claim that everything has to solve inequality.
  - csallen 9y ago
    I'm black, I did YC. I know quite a few women and non-white men who've gone through YC, too. I think if you made your point (which is an important one!) with less snark and hyperbole, it would be more effective.
- adpirz 9y ago
  I think OP has a point. MZ was comfortable enough leaving school for a semester, and that too after being put on academic probation for violating serious codes of ethics. Despite all that, he still managed a $500k seed investment from Peter Thiel. Students who grow up in poverty and put the work in to get into college, let alone a prestigious one like Harvard, are usually fighting to do everything right just to make it through, and many don't because they can't make financial commitments (and yes, despite tons of scholarship money) or personal commitments with family. People like Mark always had the security of their family's relative wealth and security on top of their general status in society. That's not a luxury afforded to most, and certainly not those from low-income backgrounds.
  - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
    I think the point is only 'locally' right. If you consider a long enough period of time, effectively no one has ever been able to afford the luxury of 'building a toy'. And yet, at least some people do now have that luxury. It certainly isn't impossible for lots and lots of people to afford some degree of something pretty similar tho.
fiatjaf 9y ago
What you're saying is partly true, but what do you think YC should do?
- loorinm 9y ago
  To solve inequality?? I don’t think that’s the business YC is in. But we can do a lot. We can drastically reduce the potential financial rewards for extracting value from millions of people. We can set a max income of $300k per person and the rest goes to elevating the poor. It would pretty much destroy the VC industry though.
  - fiatjaf 9y ago
    I don't understand why are you complaining they aren't solving inequality, then.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
    Let's rephrase that: it would destroy capitalism. Somehow I don't think you'd have a problem with that.
    - loorinm 9y ago
      I don't know if maybe you think capitalism is the only reason people don't just lie in bed all day, but theory has been soundly disproven.
      - ewjordan 9y ago
        The theory that non-capitalist societies can have thriving long-lasting economies that produce new innovations and lift their people up is pretty questionable so far. I can't think of a single example where there's not at least a core nugget of capitalist incentives driving things. Sure, let's layer on some socialist policies, I'm all in favor of turning that dial quite a bit further, but that's turning a dial, not blowing up the whole machine because it's not working quite as well as we'd like it to.
nikanj 9y ago
Remember being kids and going to the amusement park with your friends? They had those booths where you could win a cool price, if you successfully hit the bullseye. The middle-class kids had the pocket money to try a few times, usually in the games which seemed the best match for their skills. The rich kids went around and picked the booth with the coolest prices, then simply tried again until they won the price they wanted, or got bored. The poor kids were manning the booths, helping their parents sell popcorn and keep the show running. Things haven't changed much as we've grown up. If you come from a wealthy background, you can keep on trying seed ideas until you find traction. With a more middle-class background, you can put in a small number of attempts, spread between long stretches of saving more money. If you're poor, you'll never have the ability to even try.
- loorinm 9y ago
  Yes. And clubs like YC reward those who have had extra chances for their whole lives. While the lower-class kids help their parents, the better-off kids are getting tutoring, music classes, and expensive toys to grow their skills and do better later on.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  > Things haven't changed much as we've grown up. If you come from a wealthy background, you can keep on trying seed ideas until you find traction. With a more middle-class background, you can put in a small number of attempts, spread between long stretches of saving more money. If you're poor, you'll never have the ability to even try. This is pretty much correct (though I don't think lower than middle class = poor, but I digress). Some people have better opportunities growing up. Some people can stay in mummy and daddys comfortable house for free while they try and make it big with a startup. Are you implying that the rest of us shouldn't even bother trying? I really don't want to use "not growing up as rich as mark zuckerburg" as an excuse.
aeorgnoieang 9y ago
But, on a long enough time horizon – at least more than several decades anyways – it's not true that the poor have gotten poorer. It's not even obvious that the rich today are relatively wealthier than in the past because, e.g. there's no obvious way to compare having running water and owning an iPhone to being the highest status person in your area and owning lots of slaves.
nathan_long 9y ago
> It often feels like 99% of “startup wisdom” comes down to “have a rich family that supported you emotionally and then paid for your college, and then let you start a company at their house for free” Or perhaps more to the point, "the best ideas to try are the ones you need investment to try, and oh hey that's what we do here. Don't go building a business that's profitable from the start, where YC can't own part of it. All that internal pressure to make money early on isn't good for you; what you want is external pressure to make LOTS of money later on, assuming your social network for pigs didn't fail."
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
HN should ban the adjective "cute" from all posts. Does using this adjective make you feel superior? Also, it's kinda amazing how this issue gets brought up so many times on HN and is proven to be false (there are tons of examples where extremely successful entrepreneurs came from poor upbringing, and in many cases the bad condition was what motivated them to push further) and yet you keep seeing the same argument over and over. For gods sake there are even people who used to serve in prison make a great business that you will never be able to create in your whole life if you keep thinking that way. Sure, it would be great if the world was more fair. But it's not. You can either bitch about it on HN like this like a sour social justice warrior, Or, you could go do something.
- loorinm 9y ago
  Bitching and doing something are not mutually exclusive activities. Some successful people being from poor upbringings does not make it commonplace. If your claims were true, by definition we would not have inequality.
  - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
    Except that your narrative is exactly trying to paint it as "only rich people get to succeed", which will lead to the "not rich" to give up trying, which will only make things worse. You probably think you're doing justice to the world, but you're actually doing the opposite. The real successful people succeed DESPITE their perils and in many cases BECAUSE OF their perils, and these people should be encouraged to pour all their passion into whatever they want to achieve and succeed. Instead I see people like you always saying "doesn't matter how hard you try, the world is fucked up because only the rich get richer, so don't tell people to work hard, it's just exploitation". That probably makes you feel better about being "woke", but your argument does nothing but convincing people to give up. These people who come from bad background, when they do succeed, they they give back to the alienated community they came from. These are the people who actually make progress with inequality, not some guy on HN and Medium.com bitching about how the world is unfair and all the successful companies are shit because of that. Your narrative only gives people excuse to complain and get distracted from actually building valuable things. Like I said, the world IS unfair, and nothing will stop it from being unfair for unforeseeable future. The most efficient way to make sure we get out of this situation is to encourage the alienated people to succeed instead of getting them into "me vs. you" mindset, because that mindset is a loser mindset which only leads to wannabe activism, instead of actually creating something valuable. If you want to prove me wrong, just tell me a single successful person who built a valuable business or product, who spent most of their time playing gender/sex/income/inequality/whatever activist. Unless your business itself is a consulting business to sell to these classes, I have never seen one.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
elihu 9y ago
Sure, some people have the opportunity/time/money to run an unprofitable startup for awhile and some people don't. Wealthy people can try again when their first idea doesn't take off. They also generally don't have to sell as much equity (especially in the early stages) as a middle-class person would. Still, starting businesses is something that people (who have at least some amount of free time and spare money) do, and it's usually desirable for those involved that they succeed rather than fail. Talking about startup strategy is a useful endeavor for anyone interested in such things, and that isn't exclusively wealthy people. Plenty of rich people try to start businesses that fail, and many don't have any interest in running a startup. I wish there were more opportunities for people who aren't from at least middle-class backgrounds to succeed in these kinds of things, but unfortunately that's not how society is currently structured. I think wider access to healthcare, education, food, and affordable housing would help.

brucephillips 9y ago

As much as I disagree with his thesis here, the entire point of it is that YC wants to and does fund toy companies. So they're trying to solve the exact problem you're railing against.

loorinm 9y ago
So funding toy companies (IE Mark Zuckerberg and other well-off white men) is solving the problem of only funding Mark Zuckerberg and other well-off white men?
- encoderer 9y ago
  So nothing is worthwhile if it doesn’t also solve inequality? Tall order.
  - loorinm 9y ago
    I am directly responding to above person’s claim that this practice by YC is somehow solving the very problem it is creating. At no point did I claim that everything has to solve inequality.
- csallen 9y ago
  I'm black, I did YC. I know quite a few women and non-white men who've gone through YC, too. I think if you made your point (which is an important one!) with less snark and hyperbole, it would be more effective.
adpirz 9y ago
I think OP has a point. MZ was comfortable enough leaving school for a semester, and that too after being put on academic probation for violating serious codes of ethics. Despite all that, he still managed a $500k seed investment from Peter Thiel. Students who grow up in poverty and put the work in to get into college, let alone a prestigious one like Harvard, are usually fighting to do everything right just to make it through, and many don't because they can't make financial commitments (and yes, despite tons of scholarship money) or personal commitments with family. People like Mark always had the security of their family's relative wealth and security on top of their general status in society. That's not a luxury afforded to most, and certainly not those from low-income backgrounds.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  I think the point is only 'locally' right. If you consider a long enough period of time, effectively no one has ever been able to afford the luxury of 'building a toy'. And yet, at least some people do now have that luxury. It certainly isn't impossible for lots and lots of people to afford some degree of something pretty similar tho.

fiatjaf 9y ago

What you're saying is partly true, but what do you think YC should do?

loorinm 9y ago
To solve inequality?? I don’t think that’s the business YC is in. But we can do a lot. We can drastically reduce the potential financial rewards for extracting value from millions of people. We can set a max income of $300k per person and the rest goes to elevating the poor. It would pretty much destroy the VC industry though.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  I don't understand why are you complaining they aren't solving inequality, then.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  Let's rephrase that: it would destroy capitalism. Somehow I don't think you'd have a problem with that.
  - loorinm 9y ago
    I don't know if maybe you think capitalism is the only reason people don't just lie in bed all day, but theory has been soundly disproven.
    - ewjordan 9y ago
      The theory that non-capitalist societies can have thriving long-lasting economies that produce new innovations and lift their people up is pretty questionable so far. I can't think of a single example where there's not at least a core nugget of capitalist incentives driving things. Sure, let's layer on some socialist policies, I'm all in favor of turning that dial quite a bit further, but that's turning a dial, not blowing up the whole machine because it's not working quite as well as we'd like it to.

nikanj 9y ago

Remember being kids and going to the amusement park with your friends? They had those booths where you could win a cool price, if you successfully hit the bullseye. The middle-class kids had the pocket money to try a few times, usually in the games which seemed the best match for their skills. The rich kids went around and picked the booth with the coolest prices, then simply tried again until they won the price they wanted, or got bored. The poor kids were manning the booths, helping their parents sell popcorn and keep the show running. Things haven't changed much as we've grown up. If you come from a wealthy background, you can keep on trying seed ideas until you find traction. With a more middle-class background, you can put in a small number of attempts, spread between long stretches of saving more money. If you're poor, you'll never have the ability to even try.

loorinm 9y ago
Yes. And clubs like YC reward those who have had extra chances for their whole lives. While the lower-class kids help their parents, the better-off kids are getting tutoring, music classes, and expensive toys to grow their skills and do better later on.
HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
> Things haven't changed much as we've grown up. If you come from a wealthy background, you can keep on trying seed ideas until you find traction. With a more middle-class background, you can put in a small number of attempts, spread between long stretches of saving more money. If you're poor, you'll never have the ability to even try. This is pretty much correct (though I don't think lower than middle class = poor, but I digress). Some people have better opportunities growing up. Some people can stay in mummy and daddys comfortable house for free while they try and make it big with a startup. Are you implying that the rest of us shouldn't even bother trying? I really don't want to use "not growing up as rich as mark zuckerburg" as an excuse.

aeorgnoieang 9y ago

But, on a long enough time horizon – at least more than several decades anyways – it's not true that the poor have gotten poorer. It's not even obvious that the rich today are relatively wealthier than in the past because, e.g. there's no obvious way to compare having running water and owning an iPhone to being the highest status person in your area and owning lots of slaves.

nathan_long 9y ago

> It often feels like 99% of “startup wisdom” comes down to “have a rich family that supported you emotionally and then paid for your college, and then let you start a company at their house for free” Or perhaps more to the point, "the best ideas to try are the ones you need investment to try, and oh hey that's what we do here. Don't go building a business that's profitable from the start, where YC can't own part of it. All that internal pressure to make money early on isn't good for you; what you want is external pressure to make LOTS of money later on, assuming your social network for pigs didn't fail."

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

HN should ban the adjective "cute" from all posts. Does using this adjective make you feel superior? Also, it's kinda amazing how this issue gets brought up so many times on HN and is proven to be false (there are tons of examples where extremely successful entrepreneurs came from poor upbringing, and in many cases the bad condition was what motivated them to push further) and yet you keep seeing the same argument over and over. For gods sake there are even people who used to serve in prison make a great business that you will never be able to create in your whole life if you keep thinking that way. Sure, it would be great if the world was more fair. But it's not. You can either bitch about it on HN like this like a sour social justice warrior, Or, you could go do something.

loorinm 9y ago
Bitching and doing something are not mutually exclusive activities. Some successful people being from poor upbringings does not make it commonplace. If your claims were true, by definition we would not have inequality.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  Except that your narrative is exactly trying to paint it as "only rich people get to succeed", which will lead to the "not rich" to give up trying, which will only make things worse. You probably think you're doing justice to the world, but you're actually doing the opposite. The real successful people succeed DESPITE their perils and in many cases BECAUSE OF their perils, and these people should be encouraged to pour all their passion into whatever they want to achieve and succeed. Instead I see people like you always saying "doesn't matter how hard you try, the world is fucked up because only the rich get richer, so don't tell people to work hard, it's just exploitation". That probably makes you feel better about being "woke", but your argument does nothing but convincing people to give up. These people who come from bad background, when they do succeed, they they give back to the alienated community they came from. These are the people who actually make progress with inequality, not some guy on HN and Medium.com bitching about how the world is unfair and all the successful companies are shit because of that. Your narrative only gives people excuse to complain and get distracted from actually building valuable things. Like I said, the world IS unfair, and nothing will stop it from being unfair for unforeseeable future. The most efficient way to make sure we get out of this situation is to encourage the alienated people to succeed instead of getting them into "me vs. you" mindset, because that mindset is a loser mindset which only leads to wannabe activism, instead of actually creating something valuable. If you want to prove me wrong, just tell me a single successful person who built a valuable business or product, who spent most of their time playing gender/sex/income/inequality/whatever activist. Unless your business itself is a consulting business to sell to these classes, I have never seen one.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

elihu 9y ago

Sure, some people have the opportunity/time/money to run an unprofitable startup for awhile and some people don't. Wealthy people can try again when their first idea doesn't take off. They also generally don't have to sell as much equity (especially in the early stages) as a middle-class person would. Still, starting businesses is something that people (who have at least some amount of free time and spare money) do, and it's usually desirable for those involved that they succeed rather than fail. Talking about startup strategy is a useful endeavor for anyone interested in such things, and that isn't exclusively wealthy people. Plenty of rich people try to start businesses that fail, and many don't have any interest in running a startup. I wish there were more opportunities for people who aren't from at least middle-class backgrounds to succeed in these kinds of things, but unfortunately that's not how society is currently structured. I think wider access to healthcare, education, food, and affordable housing would help.