[SeanAppleby]

I grew up working class and found that VCs were more accessible than, in my experience, any other upper class institution I have seen.

When I was younger I had an easier time getting meetings with partners at decent VC funds (including YC) than interviews with Google, for example. And accordingly an easier time getting seed funding than a prestigious internship.

VCs would generally look at prototypes and listen to the story, if you made the initial case concisely and it made sense, whereas other institutions would just throw my resume away with no calls because it didn't match whatever filters. I just wouldn't even get to talk to hiring managers at decent companies.

I didn't raise a really meaningful amount of money, but it seems implausible that VCs/angel investors who were willing to give me five-six figures for pre-seed wouldn't have given me six-seven in the next round if traction was there.

They said they would, and if they wouldn't, they knew the company had a runway such that it would need to raise again, so giving me anything would have been irrational. If I was going to be discriminated against for being from a working class background/not going to a good enough school/being a technical cofounder who didn't study CS, it would probably be at the very beginning.

[projectazorian]

Willing to believe that this used to be the case, especially when YC was less famous and G was wildly elitist in its hiring practices (less so now). But I’ve seen very few venture funded startup founders, then or now, who lack either family wealth or an elite education.

In fact I’d say the diversity of founders seems worse than it was five years ago, back then it seemed like founders from underrepresented groups were becoming more common.