The startup founder virus

I have stumbled upon a Reddit post talking about the experience of Y Combinator. About ludicrous growth, peer pressure and all that. Huge stress for an opportunity to “think bigger”. You see, I do not wish to diminish the authors efforts, in fact any of the YC backed businesses. However, at the same time I feel like this culture is exactly part of the problem and why we cannot have good things. Take AI for example: it didn’t come about because somebody poured billions upon billions in the field or through calculated effort. In fact, in a way all of the current AI companies are leeching off 50+ year old research. The research that has been done carefully by curious and passionate people. And those people were not curious or passionate about money. Even Google itself hasn’t capitalised on the transformer architecture at first, even though their researchers literally came up with it. The bootstrapping part is hard and is out of reach for most people–you have to be passionate and willing…