SV/tech/USA is so great, anyone can make it big. You just have to be smart and work hard. Oh, and be family friends with billionaires. Yeah, that's all.
That's one way to get funding, but it's certainly not the only way, there are lots of counterexamples. As one obvious counterexample, one of the founding principles of YC is providing an open application process to provide people who don't have any personal connections access to the SV network. Larry and Sergey weren't well connected when they started, either, afaik, as most PhD students aren't. If you're doing something interesting that seems likely to succeed, and you're motivated, it's not all that hard to become connected to wealthy people who are very interested in turning their money into more money.
This is an incredibly defeatist/self pitying line of thinking that I'm seeing more of (the world is stacked against me, you have to be born into it, etc) and is related to a lot of other self-defeating thought patterns. It's not going to help you or anyone else who subscribes to it. Maybe it's just that bad news is much easier to see, thanks to the web, so people think bad behavior is more common now, and it's turning people cynical.
I think incorrect (or even correct, but rare) narratives are dangerous. Especially when they're the feel-good type that people tell to make themselves feel better about the way the world works. (meritocracy, egalitarianism, etc)
Anecdata, but: I left academic hard science because I realized it was too difficult to get ahead; moved to the bay since I can code and it was a way to create a runway and find myself, and pitch companies. Got a contract coding gig, because a professor on the board of my roommate's company was impressed that I had independently implemented his prototype as a personal side project. Applied to 10+ startups for "real programming jobs", including through triplebyte, rejected by all, finally got hired by a roommate's friend (on reputation only) whose company needed asses in seats for an investor meeting.
Meanwhile, I'd been pitching 3 biotech ideas and one tech idea (I had written verilog for a hardware prototype of a deep learning chip) and got no bites on any of my pitches.
Finally, a friend offered me a VP product position (because he needed someone he could trust) which I was about to jump ship for, and then my current CEO counter-offered by agreeing to put his personal money as a lead in one of the biotech startups I'd pitched (that was somewhat meritocratic because he has seen how I operate as a coder in the company and was impressed, and I think he figures, probably correctly that if I'm that good a coder then my biotech skills are even better because that's what I'm formally trained in)
Since getting here, I haven't once advanced through pure merit, and have always advanced through connections.
Yeah, I don't think any of your friends offered you a position because you're they're friend. They offered you a position because they knew you AND they knew you were smart/talented/a coder/whatever.
I got my first foot in the door via an internship on a referral from a friend who had interned there the year before. I had no formal credentials (just taking CS classes on the side of an Econ degree in college), but I had spent all of my math/CS classes studying with this kid. He knew I was smart and put his own ass on the line to get me an interview.
You can be successful purely by reading books in a room, writing code alone, and building some brilliant startup. (E.g. look at the CD Baby guy, what's his name). But it's SUPER unlikely. You're way better off being a social human being, building relationships/trust, and paying it back/forward to folks that do right by you when you know you deserve it.
my contention is not that I got any jobs because I was a friend (or a contact of a friend) but rather that I very likely wouldn't have gotten any jobs if I weren't a contact of a friend.
A lot of the SV narratives circle around meritocracy (or other ways of 'hacking the signalling game' even. And when you say "it's SUPER unlikely", I think you're 100% correct. And so challenging the meritocracy myth is important.
Your story is the "meritocracy myth" in action. You demonstrating your merit to people who then vouched for you. It'd be nice if we were good at judging people objectively without knowing them for very long, but we're not, especially in very important aspects like trustworthiness.
Being good at making connections and being seen as capable and trustworthy enough by your existing connections is absolutely a form of merit, an important one if you want to marshal enough people and resources and investors to build a successful company. My point was that the seemingly common mentality of "you have to be born into it, the rich only help the rich, etc" is not true, it's not a useful belief, and the counterexamples are not rare. It can help, certainly, but it's not a requirement by any stretch.
> Larry and Sergey weren't well connected when they started, either, afaik, as most PhD students aren't.
That was 20 years ago. As much history as Larry Ellison's story in 1970s. Things have changed a lot, and the Silicon Valley today is a poster child for cronyism.
The VCs don't even bother opening "cold emails" (a ridiculous term for something that purports to be an open club). It's a herd of arrogant hipster bros who have no clue what they're doing and try to CYA by "warm introductions" (when their bet fails, they can shift the blame on a 3rd party).
The investment is not completely off-limits (my own story is a testament to that), but it's magnitudes harder to get if you're not connected, and oftentimes you have to pay through the nose to the "people who know people". I also know some rare cases when super-angels answer to complete strangers and subsequently invest, but these are exceptions rather than the rule.
> This is an incredibly defeatist/self pitying line of thinking that I'm seeing more of (the world is stacked against me, you have to be born into it, etc) and is related to a lot of other self-defeating thought patterns.
Can you back up this statement? Why is it self-defeating? You put it in your post as if it somehow logically follows from the rest but it doesn't.
The claim is that people who were not born or just lucked into connections with the rich and powerful are going to have to work significantly harder or get lucky to get access to those opportunities. While the people that do, can put some work in and basically claim the opportunity or just simply try again without significant loss or even having to settle for less.
"Lots of counterexamples" don't mean anything unless you can show that there are in fact so many counterexamples that they outnumber them in a similar ratio as the people in the first group utterly outnumber the people in the latter group. Or even by a factor of ten.
But they don't and almost nobody would be having this discussion if they did.
> Maybe it's just that bad news is much easier to see, thanks to the web, so people think bad behavior is more common now, and it's turning people cynical.
And you're going to need more than those words to properly argue that this is a bad thing.
Because a lot of bad news wasn't visible enough. And people have been underestimating the magnitude of bad behaviour. And a lot of people in a lot of places in the world most definitely aren't being cynical enough.
Sure there are psychological downsides to being bombarded with bad news and negative information all day, and we need to find ways to handle that, for our collective mental health. Doesn't mean the bad news is somehow wrong or faulty.
> Larry and Sergey weren't well connected when they started, either, afaik, as most PhD students aren't.
Doubt it. I don't think In-Q-Tel/CIA will write you a check because you just happen to have this shiny new search engine that may or may not change the world.
100% sure. Like your source says, it's a partnership between the CIA and the private sector.
"Close" does not mean part of the organisation. The founder Norman R. Augustine isn't even a CIA person. It is somewhat similar to a spinned-off company which runs independently but has tight connections (and a contract, in case of In-Q-Tel) with the organization that spinned it off.
* In-Q-Tel (theoretically) may have other contracts and major partnerships.
* In-Q-Tel gets to pick who they invest into; CIA may express interest in a particular area or a company but In-Q-Tel manage their portfolios.
* While In-Q-Tel is non-profit, the profits flow back and the employees may profit from it. Meaning, while part of the funds come from the CIA (taxpayers), part come from the past profits.
