I don't think I'm overly pessimistic. I'm saying look at post-2000. What do you have, in reality? Google (intelligence connections), YouTube ... doubtful to have gotten off the ground if one of the co-founders wasn't coincidentally related to Jim Clark ... and MySpace, a "startup" which seems to have been "started up" by Fox itself ... and Facebook, which everybody knows by now is just a greedy jerk who stole somebody else's idea and found a VC firm with intelligence community ties who see a device for gathering info on personal relationships useful. BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO the several people NYT claims may have been the original people behind MyFace? They're suing or writing "I got shafted" memoirs. They didn't make it. What are the consequences? Nobody knows because for the most part such people are politely brushed under the carpet (with MyFace being an exception). Oh and some company that went public last week that does something with servers that I don't understand. What else? What else really made it? Flickr to a lesser extent. All I'm saying is if somebody with who didn't go to Horace Mann and Harvard or Yale and isn't related to somebody who may help behind the scenes came up with "the next big thing" ... NOW ... during THIS time period when China controls more of our economic destiny than silicon valley and wallstreet combined ... well then you should pay close attention to that person. They're super-smart in a way that is directly relevant in cold, hard reality land. But can you find such a person? Who? Thought so. Everybody else just take with a few dozen grains of salt. And people who know how to make it in tough environments will never show you how its done. Why would they? The number one rule in business is "Figure it out for yourself." I'm sorry but there are no shortcuts, no magic formulas, and the sooner you realize that the better. And people who tell you that they have some "system" for pumping out real-estate fortunes, or making a killing in the stock/commodity market, or pumping out multibillion dollar startups at-will (ecompanies, idealab, and the 300 or so "incubators" that got started 1998-2000) never made a penny in anything but getting people to sign up for their magical secret systems. And making money at one time period during certain circumstances does not the expert make. Honestly - who thinks mark cuban could start another company and sell it a year later for $5 Billion today? How about 1 Billion? I doubt he could convince anybody in today's market to give him a loan. I'll say what is being left out. More than likely you will not make it at YC or even Kleiner Perkins. You will probably fail. You might be inspired to come back again having learned much and made good contacts from the experience. But nobody at YC will give you a loan and pay your apartment rent and car bills while you look for a job to pay the bills until you recover and get ready to try again. And you need to be used to that reality because people who called will call less and less and then eventually they won't return your calls. For years. Until they hear you're up to something cool again. If you can deal with that reality, fine. Deal with it 1, 2, maybe 3 or 4 times. If it sounds to cold, rethink how much time you're ready to commit.