Sean Rad of Tinder, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Brian Chesky of Airbnb. Composite: Getty / AP / Rex Picture a startup founder.
Chances are you went straight for a Mark Zuckerberg-type: male, white, nerdy and, above all, young. Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, three years after the collapse of the dotcom bubble, at the age of 20.
Twelve years later, the company he founded is worth $270bn, and the tech world is in the middle of a new boom. Valuations are going through the roof, and big money is flowing into every stage of the system: in 2015, almost $60bn of venture capital was invested in startups in the US alone.
As a result, it is easy to see the second dotcom boom as a rare volley in favour of intergenerational equality : huge sums of money flowing from older, richer, people into the pockets of hungry young entrepreneurs with ideas, talent and motivation but no access to capital.
In other words, the stronger the tech sector becomes, the more Mark Zuckerbergs there are, and the less millennials – 18- to 34-year-olds, also known as Generation Y – have to worry about their systematic economic disadvantage. Don’t worry about a financial system tilted against your interests: just invent Facebook.
If that does not sound too reassuring, it is with good reason. Technology will not save us. For every way in which the sector stands alone from the wider economy, there are two more in which it reinforces the same constraints.
Go back and think about that stereotypical founder again: chances are you noted the other attributes that come alongside youth. White, male and nerdy is not the best recipe for a broad spread of wealth among a generation, and yet it remains sadly accurate for a large proportion of the industry.
Y Combinator, a prestigious […]
