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And of course, there's the meta-question:

Why do investors price so highly these gambles over things that are already generating demonstrable value for real human beings?

Like, why do these cultural signifiers make them salivate to be parted from their funds given the track record of tech (20% fail in year 1, 1% become unicorns, 18% of first-time founders generate a company that can even tread water)?

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Presumably a combination of survivorship bias (we are most aware of the successful tech companies with asshole-founders-and-foosball-tables-in-the-lounges, and not all of the unsuccessful companies with the same) and fundamental attribution error (we think having an asshole-founder-and-foosball-tables is predictive of or causally related to being successful).

Oh, that's the easy question, it is one of basic psychology. We like and trust people and environments that are similar to our own.

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