However I’m noting that rigged or not most VCs, on average, are losing money. Money flow is negative in startups based on my limited research, so this is probably a good thing in that although Joe Sixpack is deprived of the chance to hit a home run with an insider play he’s also unlikely to have a chance to lose money betting on startups, most of which will fail.

Interesting observation, yet I tend to disagree, while granting that proving the “game is rigged” (or to what degree the game is rigged) would require a great deal of legwork. Google, for example, shows how the modern technological corporation takes shape. It’s started by two bright-boys attending stanford U. Steinford may not be the headquarters for La Cosa Nostra, but few would deny that a sort of country club atmosphere exists in Palo Alto (at least west–east P.A. is now ghetto, baybe), which caters to the well-to-do.

A few kids from the wrong side of the tracks get in to Stanferd, or UCs, Ivy League, etc, but I suspect if you did a bit of research you would find that most of the dweebs (or dweebettes) entering Stanferd U and top-level schools were from wealthy, or at least upper-middle class families.

The corps seem to feed off of, and grow out of the top-level universities. At the very least, Page and Brin happen to be in the right place at the right time. Many high-powered scientists and programming people work and live around Stanford (and Silicon Valley of course), AND there is capital: industry and business needs its propeller-heads as much as it did when Carnegie made use of engineering advances in the processing of iron and steel to establish US Steel.

It’s not like Googles (or yahoos, or microsofts) begin in Joel Turnipseed’s garage in his home in Reno. Bill Gates himself comes from Harvard: old money, then. So while granting it’s not mafia in the sense of AL Caponay, they do take shape in a certain intellectual–and financial– context which some cynics might term a racket, or following Galbraith, an oligarchy of some sort.

Sorry to post this non sequitur comment here, but found no contact link. Please see your Flickr messages about my attempts to help a couple of good Korean high school kids find a suitable homestay situation in Medford.

Thanks much,

Clay