Yeah, isn't the entire point of SF startup culture (for the last decade++) to build personal wealth through a successful exit rather than build a sustainable business that benefits society? It's a big speculative con game... Opposite of sincere.

Of course we can warp the semantics and argue that these people are "sincere" in their desire to defraud retail investors or something, but that doesn't seem to be the author's argument.

A successful exit means you've built something so useful that someone else will pay lots of money for it. Sure that gets twisted sometimes when borderline frauds (and actual frauds) sell companies through misrepresentation ... but there is similar fraud whenever and wherever money is involved!

Fundamentally, the vast vast majority of founders who exit successfully made society better somehow.

But ... it's also true that founders who exit successfully are like 0.001% of the Bay Area's population, but we talk about them like they're 10% ... so we should all stop talking about them so much ;)

I think this is a form of selection bias. We hear about -- and rage about -- the people you describe here because it's news, and it's outrageous.

But there are lots of people with a sincere mission who we don't hear about, because they're quietly working toward their goals.

That doesn't say that their goals are worthwhile or that what they're doing is actually good for the world, but they can still sincerely believe it is.

Most of them fail, and we hear about precious few of them. That doesn't make them any less sincere either.