zlacker

I've seen what you describe often, people that are simply bitter and spew hate. But does jealousy and bitterness invalidate their point of view?

I've founded two start-ups in my life, both still generating revenue and still alive but practically failures for their intent. The first one failed primarily since I didn't know how to execute, had no understanding of business model and distribution, all the classics. The second one I think should have been much more successful were it not for a lot of random factors: covid, scheming employees, much harder sales cycles, etc. You may think I'm rationalizing this, but I've had enough self-doubt to reach this conclusion.

I am jealous of the people that founded start-ups 10 years before me, and which gave bad advice that I realized too late to be bad. But at the same time, does this invalidate my view that the entire ecosystem is deeply corrupt and unfair?

Success and failure are a matter of luck and circumstance to a large degree. This implies that outside of a fee meritorious success stories (see the original 90s video of Bezos arguing why book are best to start as a niche), most success stories in the startup world have no more merit than your own, so why wouldn't you expect negative feelings to exist?

>>mihaic+(OP)
It's on you to figure out how the world actually works instead of taking the words of people who fell into riches for gospel truth. It's a hard lesson to learn, especially if you have to pay the price of watching your startups fail despite your best efforts. Sour grapes and bitterness is how people react when they discover, years too late, that they badly misplayed their cards. The anger is then directed at the injustice of the system when in reality what held people back was not that the game is somewhat rigged but a failure to understand the actual rules.

Bezos won because he is a cutthroat entrepreneur who deeply understands the rules. The Amazon story is a Bezos creation, specifically designed to draw attention away from the ugly parts of Amazon and to make Bezos look like a plucky underdog fighting for consumers. It's a PR narrative and hilariously distorted.

>>gizmo+Uf
Sure, put the blame on the individual instead of acknowledging that the lies we were fed in our youth held us back.