

Are entertainment and politics more meritocratic than startups? - theheretic

I've been commenting on HN for a while now, but I'm posting this under a different username so that, when I get burned at the stake, I'll be able to forget about it and move on next week.<p>And, before I begin, let me say that I'm not accusing anyone, from pg &#38; the YC team, to angels, to venture capitalists (all of whom I greatly admire) of anything. I am simply stating an empirical observation.<p>So, to ask the question: Are politics and entertainment more meritocratic than startups? This might seem absurd, until you look at the data, and, as it turns out, there's quite a bit of data.<p>For example, take a look at the Wikipedia list of people who went from "rags to riches" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rags_to_riches). This is, of course, not a complete list or a statistically random sample, but the trend is obvious: it's mostly entertainers and politicians. The only person on there who's arguably a startup founder is Larry Ellison, and his company is much less of a technology company than a sales company. There are founders of other kinds of businesses- Sheldon Adelson, the casino baron, and Lakshmi Mittal, the British/Indian steel baron, to name two- but no technical startup people.<p>To approach it from the other direction, look at the most famous startup founders. Bill Gates- his father was a name partner at the largest law firm in Seattle, Preston, Gates &#38; Ellis. Larry Page and Sergey Brin- their parents, all four of them, were top computer science or mathematics professors. Michael Dell- he started his company with a $500,000 loan from a relative. Mark Zuckerberg- his parents were both doctors. There are, of course, exceptions, but the general rule seems to be in this direction.<p>Or, to take a third angle, look at any list of orphans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_orphans, http://thirdworldorphans.org/gpage.html34.html, and many more). There are lots of politicians and entertainers and demagogues and novelists, but very few startup founders (and scientists, for that matter); Steve Jobs is the only one I was able to find, but he was so young when he was adopted that he has no memories of his biological parents.<p>So, what do you all think? I've only been able to list famous people here, because those are the ones I can look up, but any investors reading this probably have a better data set- what have you found?
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sharpn
You have a point. But I think the sample is biased because of fame. A founder
who goes from $0 to $10m is rags-to-riches by most definitions of the term,
but goes largely unnoticed _unless_ they seek fame - and many don't.

Conversely, you cannot easily go from nowhere to successful in either politics
or entertainment without becoming widely known - almost by definition of
success in those industries.

That said - I can think of relatively obscure rags-to-riches stories in
entertainment (writers/producers etc. Rod Temperton springs to mind) so you
could be right. Would be interesting to see a better data set, as you say.

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onewland
I think being exposed [or not being exposed] to computers from a young age
will affect your ability to synthesize new concepts and analyze old ones in
technology.

Either way, these are all hugely outliers. The best way to get wealth is
clearly inheritance.

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theheretic
I'd say outright inheritance is the second best way, with entrepreneurship in
general as the best. The three wealthiest people in the US (Gates, Buffett,
Ellison) all got their money through entrepreneurship. (Buffett's father,
incidentally, was a congressman, Howard Buffett of Nebraska.)

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loganfrederick
This line of arguing could go last for pages, but Gates and Buffett both came
from successful families and built upon that success through entrepreneurship.
It was a mix of both.

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notaddicted
I don't see any lack of merit among your examples, Gates, Page & Brin, Dell,
Zuckerberg, all solved major problems in a way that allowed them to build a
business.

~~~
theheretic
Yes, but the point is, if startups were very meritocratic, then other people
who didn't have powerful parents would build bigger businesses and outshine
them, for the simple reason that people without powerful parents outnumber
those with powerful parents by a margin of something like 30:1. The only
alternative explanation is that people with better parents are more talented,
and there is indeed a correlation there, but it's fairly weak, and there's no
reason to believe that technical talent is more heritable than political or
singing or acting talent.

