How to hire low experience, high potential people

This is possible and even likely depending on how you hire.

But I think the OP might be assuming you can onboard whomever you've hired and instead referring to the relative incentives in each environment. For example, big companies tend to plan quarter to quarter, while small companies typically have a pile of things they need done urgently and are incentivized to help folks move as fast as possible (company runway may only be 1 year). That sets up a dynamic where large companies make you spend time derisking new project proposals and getting buy-in, in a way that small companies don't (this is where the agility comes from). Bigco also may have higher standards for getting something off the ground and a lower tolerance for code that is likely to be thrown away, whereas at startups you often write a pile of not-so-great code just to prove the thing works + understand your customer, with the knowledge that you'll have to throw it away when it's time to grow and scale.

One more annoying wrinkle: big companies sometimes have investments that mean you can't use the best tool for the best job. At Google you have to use borg and a very annoying deep stack of stuff to expose a service to the public -- you can't just buy a domain and spin up your website on a $10/mo server with nginx. You can't use React. You can't use PyTorch and just fork the hottest new model that came out -- you'll have to translate it into Tensorflow or JAX first. You also have to build using tools that assume and can handle scale, but sacrifice agility and developer ergonomics for that.

Oh one more thing: people at big companies are so obsessed with level. If you have good ideas and want to try them out but you're underleveled, you're going to have an impossible time geting buy-in from leadership to let you lead or even try the thing. At small companies if you have an idea that's good for the company, it's obvious to your leadership and they're just like go do it, you're in charge of this project, show me what can happen in a week. And you can make stuff happen. Low friction. Big companies might also have an entire team of PMs trying to decide what to prioritize (all the while playing political games since it affects their standing in the company), who also have to sync with eng and design, and then some pushback between the two happen. At small companies the number of people to get on board is just smaller and it makes things go faster.

And what is it that you think this hypothetical startup actually needs? The most motivated janitor money can buy?

> You have no idea if dad knows anything about business.

A magnate that knows nothing about business? That doesn't make any sense. A magnate is literally characterized by their involvement in business. Perhaps you mean that mom could be the magnate instead of dad? There was nothing to suggest that she isn't the magnate. It was never specified.

> And if he does, you have no idea if dad taught any of it to kid.

And? You're not hiring the kid for his business acumen. You are hiring the kid for their mediocre capabilities in whatever work you need done and using them as a connection to get in touch with the magnate of the family.

A slightly better worker isn't significant like you make it out to be. In fact, even if you do find the 'magical rockstar', chances are they'll quickly move on to the next job anyway, and then you're back to dealing with mediocre. May as well design the company around mediocre from the start. Let's be real: Startups are generally not attractive places to work as compared to the alternatives the best of the best have in front of them. If the 'rockstar' really, truly, wants to live the startup life, they are going to start their own and eat your lunch in the process.

> And if he did, you have no idea if any of it is relevant to developing biotech software.

But the advice of a welfare parent is? There are no guarantees in life, but when playing the odds that is who you are choosing?

> Nobody in the company is going to care about dad's connections to the dude that runs Henrysburg Laundromat.

Except for the person who actually has to make the business a success, not just collect a paycheck and get a new job if the business fails. They don't get to sit around writing code all day. They have to actually get out there and meet people who will move things forward.

I get it, Field of Dreams is a fun concept... for a movie. But that's not how things work in the real world. Simply building it is not enough. Business is, at the end of the day, about people.