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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

Look at the diversity in the first three employees: Jobs, half Middle-Eastern, Woz, a every-day American descending from mix of a handful of European countries, and Bill Fernandez, a Hispanic/Latino.

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Even more interesting is how they were brought together largely by parents making decisions to learn technical skills and then being adept enough to obtain employment at a top company, choosing to live in the neighborhood they lived in near other technical people with access to surplus parts, and then making enough money to provide their children with the space, time and security to tinker.

Yes, their story is not without its share of enablers. It was the perfect setup, with the right people meeting to create something huge. Most times, if you read into the background of the big players, you'll see a common right place, at the right time theme. Imagine where we'd be as a civilization if everyone had the those opportunities.

> Imagine where we'd be as a civilization if everyone had the those opportunities.

Exactly. You have to wonder how many Einsteins we've had over the centuries/millennia that never even learned to read.

When I accidentally dove into the ragey part of Twitter where Trump supporters are shouting about White Genocide, I saw a graph illustrating the percentage of white Americans dropping since the 60s and how awful that supposedly is.

I've thought about trying to identify how many of the tech companies we rely on were started by first or second-generation immigrants. Apple and Google, obviously, but I'm sure there are many more.

You should be able to find many reports that say that half of the startups based in Silicon Valley have at least one foreign-born founder. And this was before Y Combinator and other incubators encouraged and funded engineers to visit and start a company in Silicon Valley.

I've heard the same discussed in circles of founders quite a bit as well. Example:

Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/17/study-immigrants-foun...

Even more interesting is their spiritual background as well -- I didn't know Bill is a Baha'i -- that is phenomenal!

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