Sam Altman: “to have the biggest possible impact in tech move to the Bay Area”

By writing code you can do virtually anything these days. Cryptocurrency, though filled with a lot of scandalous projects, is still one of the cheapest ways to do remittance (currency transfer.) The initial founders of Bitcoin and Ethereum have profited immensely and have been able to raise money through their development foundations without any real socialite stuff. Vitalik Buterin is a stellar example of "want it? build it" programmer mentality.

For a more concrete `startup` example, which is what I think you were asking, just look at Gumroad:

https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/i-started-gumroad-as-...

Your question is rather vague and some may see it as innocuous but given your reputation, I sense that it is a leading question meant to be followed up with bad intention. You already know this: there are a myriad of Show HN projects posted all the time that are netting in good sums of money, that simply started as utilities built by programmers who were fulfilling a need they had noticed. Any of them can be capitalized at any time but most of these developers know that any path involving drinking parties and bosh hooey is likely to be a deal with the devil. To each his own.

I really don't think so. Building entails everything. Build persuasive patterns. Really not hard. Ads these days, viral marketing. Everything is about building. As we know, programmers aren't one trick ponies. If you can do build infrastructures for apps or websites, you can build infrastructures for engagement. Of course it helps to have other people to parallelize work. But that doesn't mean you need to be in SV, get funding, network with the bronies, etc.