I like the thought behind it, but it seems a liiiitle bit ingenuous to say it like that because success usually constitutes being acquired later on by the supposed "big company" and VC's making a lot of money.
The notion of retiring before 30 fuels me entirely.
1. The desire to perform win-win, wealth-creating transactions.
2. The desire to redistribute wealth from yourself to people who ascribe greater utility to that wealth.
I think what you're objecting to is Type 1 Altruists pretending to be Type 2 Altruists. Although I can't fault you for that, keep in mind that both types of altruism are utility-promoting, and that you can't have Type 2 without Type 1. :)
Two oligarchs colluding is one.
Selling out to olligarchs may be another.
Both of these seem to be increasing "perceptions"
Of Silicon Valley's ~morality.
most great founders want to both do something great and to make a lot of money.
I would guess that it's more than money though. It's also getting respect, attention, acquaintances, access and a pulpit that money buys. With that you can change the world.
Sam has a pulpit (my comment wasn't directed at Sam but I just thought of this) that money can't buy. He was interviewed on CNN and has a ton of influence that he now yields as a result of being a figurehead. My guess is that the amount of money he makes is totally secondary at this stage and he wouldn't trade that away for anything.
One last thing. It's what I call the "smoke up the ass" part. (Stick with me.) It's great to be in a position where your day is spent with people who are being nice to you because they want something from you or you are some kind of a gatekeeper for something they want. If you like that type of thing (and quite frankly nothing wrong if you do it's a drug free high) that goes way way beyond just having money.
Because the world of ambitious, information technology (IT) start ups is necessarily looking for something exceptional which, necessarily has next to nothing to do with "most", "normally", or "usually". What happened in the past, that is empirical probabilities, even for the successful start ups, is next to irrelevant for what will be powerful, valuable, and new tomorrow. Did I mention "new"? New can very much mean different and not part of most, what is normal, or what is usual.
Or, take a famous seccess story, e.g., Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, Google, Facebook, etc., review the environment when they were getting started, and, then, find for each of those successful companies how much they looked like most, normal, or usual. Answer: Not much, and where they were "most", etc., it was essentially irrelevant.
Or, the SR-71 was nothing like most, normal, or usual. So, how to evaluate the project? Sure: The evaluation was no doubt quite technical and thorough but also quite accurate. No doubt in this evaluation most, normal, and usual played no role.
Sam, looking at most, normal, and usual in the past will tell you next to nothing about what will be successful in the future; still for a wide class of start ups, there are ways to tell.
Sam, more simply, clearly you are looking at most, normal, and usual as guidance for what should look for or do for the future, but, especially for the criteria you are considering, this is poor and will throw out a larger fraction of good babies than bath water.
My first thought was that you meant disingenuous. And that makes sense in the context of your sentence.
But then I checked if ingenuous is even a word... and it is: "showing innocent or childlike simplicity and candidness" or " lacking craft or subtlety". And those sort of work in the context of the sentence too.
So either it was a typo, a misunderstanding of english word formation, a brain fart, or an intentional use of an uncommon word by someone far more articulate than I.