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Anyone who holds up Nick D’Aloisio and Andrew Hsu as examples of people who are not the real deal is going to look very very silly in a few years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sustainability is a waste of time when your only goal is to cash out as big as you can with as little investment as possible. You are mixing up "entrepreneur" with "wanting to create lasting value." A lot of what I see on HN is not the latter.
I think I would classify myself and most of my startup-knowledgable friends in the latter crowd. Is that a particularly bad thing to not be motivated by large cashouts, and instead by creating a company with long-term value?
You can get rich by buying up real estate and charging rent. All you did is sign paper and make money. "Charging rent" isn't a service. "Allowing you to live in property I purchased." isn't really providing value either.
"Building a house and selling it to a family." <=== that's creating value.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then you should be directing your criticism at the media, not the startup scene.
Why not both? The media are part of the hype machine but they aren't responsible for investing in companies like Summly, holding demo days, running weekend hackathons, acqui-hiring or bringing on board token celebrity investors... are they?
I find nothing wrong with hacakathons and acquihires, personally. As for celebrity investors, if a social media startup feels they need that kind of marketing / media attention, good for them.
Anyone who holds up Nick D’Aloisio and Andrew Hsu as examples of people who are not the real deal is going to look very very silly in a few years.
I think they will both probably be incredibly successful, the problem is they are poor role models for people hoping to make it on nothing but guts since their success came from money and connections rather than just hard work. Whether hard work was ALSO involved is another story, that is frankly irrelevant to the discussion.