This idea that parents can buy YC connections for their kids is the final nail in the coffin of the idea of Silicon Valley meritocracy.
The fact of the matter is that connections, luck, etc. rule pretty much everywhere. It's useless and unproductive to cast this blame to specific, ultimately small entities. If I had been born about 5 miles north of where I was born -- in the ghettos, vs. to a household that valued education, I would have been living a very different life. And I'm grateful that didn't happen, I'm grateful for all the opportunities I got, that my dad had friends in high places and were willing to hire me as an intern. I'm grateful that I had the social support to seek therapy when I had depression, a place to live when I was unemployed and penniless, friends that respected me, etc. I would not have had a lot of this if I was living in the third world, where opportunity is scarce.
That is the way it is. You could chide YC and all the VC world, and I'm not sure if you'd get anywhere. As far as VC firms and incubators go, it's clear to see YC is something else: they're funding nonprofits like Watsi, their partners seem to have some sense of social good, so I think snark here is misplaced.
I do think that Silicon Valley's arrogance and general out-of-touch attitude-- and unashamedly handing out VC connections to children who already benefit from a massive private welfare system is pretty damn out of touch-- poses a threat to the reputation of technologists in general (including people like me) and I'm going to fight the tide by making fun of this sort of shit. When the country stops liking "the techies" I would at least hope that some of them would recognize that we're not all the same, and that lifelong engineers are of a different (and better) character than the reigning VC-halo/TechCrunch leadership.
I'm simply curious, did you mean to imply that this is something of the past?
The use of past tense was more to reflect deficiencies in my knowledge. I was a huge fan of PG and YC circa 2006-7 because of what the original mission seemed to be: to make funding possible for less established or connected people. I have no reason to doubt that he has deviated from his mission; however, I avoided the present tense because I do not know that he stayed the course. I can speak with more confidence on the past, hence the use of that tense.
In what way? That's not a disagreement or a challenge but I'm curious what you mean by "better".
In any case isn't this exactly what happens when things become to popular and money is made? (Reminds me of that Paul Simon song where he refers to Joe Dimaggio.)
Their connections comprise a welfare system that keeps them from really failing.
This is it, isn't it. The scale of the problem is so vast that it's easy for everyone to shrug off their share of the responsibility. This seems to be the case with all civilization-scale problems and one of the deepest flaws of our species.
It is the scale of the problem that's the problem, but not in the "everybody just shrugs their shoulders way". People are working on it. The problem is that nobody can fix the problem all at once, and so in the process of creating new winners, they also create new losers.
Think about it this way: YC did not exist 8 years ago. There was no way for someone like the Reddit founders or Brian Chesky of AirBnB to create their companies; after all, they lacked connections too. There was no way for people to gain income by renting out their spare rooms (I have at least one friend who is financially kept afloat by this).
But when you solve that problem, you leave behind all the other folks who think they could also found a billion-dollar company, if only given the chance, but for whatever reason don't make it into YC. And so they get bitter and complain about how unfair the world is. Which is true; their number didn't come up on the dice, but complaining about it is not doing themselves any favors.
Keep in mind that people are upset because one rich kid will get to pay $20K to go to a YC dinner, while a couple poor kids get scholarships to attend an elite private school they wouldn't otherwise be able to go to. This is about as close to a strictly-positive-for-everyone deal as possible.
I think that one of the deepest flaws of our species is that we measure ourselves by relative accomplishment instead of absolute accomplishment. If you are reading Hacker News, you are probably in the top 1% by opportunities available worldwide. But we compare ourselves to the lucky sops who cash out for billions (even though there are only a handful of them), rather than the people around us.
I still think Silicon Valley is meritocracy since it's actually very difficult to succeed without any kind of value/merit, but meritocracy does not imply it's always going to be a fair playground for everyone.
I also find selling connection-potential to be as anti-meritocratic as you can be.
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