Sorry about that Michael, I had you confused with someone else on HN. Apologies.

Look, if the money were there and the environment was there we'd be there. It really is that simple.

I think the odds of winning the startup lottery are actually pretty high, at least for all reasonable definitions of "winning". Although that might be survivorship bias speaking on my end.

If more people were like Elon Musk we'd be working on these harder problems. I totally agree with you about your observations about people that gain power, at least in aggregate.