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In Silicon Valley itself— the very symbol of technological meritocracy and the ideal of the garage-to-empire story— sociological studies show that the majority of successful startup founders come from already affluent backgrounds, having had access to seed capital to sustain themselves without a salary during the early years, to prestigious academic networks— Stanford, Harvard, MIT— and above all to the famous“ PayPal Mafia,” that small group of former PayPal employees who went on to recommend one another to found or finance Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, Palantir, and SpaceX. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman: different names, but a single, self-contained network that feeds on itself and endlessly co-opts its own members. The myth of the lone garage inventor who builds a fortune from scratch masks a far more mundane reality: most technological revolutions are born within circles of people who already knew one another— often from college, sometimes from childhood. Even Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, portrayed as the archetype of the self-taught duo, had access from the very beginning to a California environment unique in the world, teeming with engineers, venture capital, and contacts in the electronics industry— a breeding ground that few places on Earth could offer at the time.
Even in the arts, the door never opens on its own
One might think that artistic creation— a realm of pure inspiration— escapes this logic. Nothing could be further from the truth. The worlds of contemporary art, publishing, and film also operate through co-optation, often in an even more subtle way than in business, because the myth of the solitary genius is particularly persistent there.
Flashmag! Edition 177 Octobre 2026
How many writers have had their first manuscript published because they knew a publisher or an agent, or because they had attended the right writing workshops? How many filmmakers have secured their first funding because a producer was a family friend, or because they grew up rubbing shoulders— at childhood dinner parties— with the very figures in the industry they would one day join?
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