I understand the emotional aspect of feeling like it’s out of reach for you.

Thing is, if you focus on your own skill development and apply it at even a small scale, very few people do that. Then you go for a job and guess what, the company has resources you can leverage. Then you do that, and ultimately you could be in a position to have the credibility to raise your own capital.

Play the long game and do what you can do now.

Not at all. The majority with the current AI craze not really about credibility or skills. It's like a kitchen.

Take a genius chef but give him rotten ingredients. He sweats, he tries, but the meal is barely edible. That's the $100 exercise, but only experts recognize the talent behind.

Take an unskilled cook but give him A5 Wagyu and prepared truffles. The result tastes amazing to the average person who will claim the chef is great (the investors).

It's about access to capital and selling a story ('ex'-Googler doesn't make you competent), not skills.

Great chefs in dark alleys go unnoticed.

Mediocre tourist traps near the Eiffel Tower are fully booked.

Look at Inflection AI. Average results, yet massive funding. They have the "location" and the backing, so they win. It's not about who cooks better; it's about who owns the kitchen but who sells a dream that tomorrow the food will be better.

We don't talk about small funding, we talk about 1.3 billion USD, just for that specific example, yet a tourist trap (using name-dropping / reputation instead of talent)

Snake-oil is rewarded as much as, or even more than real talent; a lot of people cannot see the difference between a chef and the ingredients, this is what I think is sad.