> Americans love their hero-arcs so much that people manage to spin anything into a “coming from nothing story” – even if they got their first investments from their uncle and worked for free in the “garage” of their parents multi-million-dollar house in Palo Alto.
It's a bit unfair to talk about the garages in Palo Alto being attached to "multi-million-dollar" houses. When the people starting Apple, HP, Google and Facebook took over a garage, the places were solidly middle class.
Even now, the price tags distort our perceptions. I've heard some venture capitalists say that most of their investments would go for salaries that would be turned over to the real estate world.
I mean, I live in London in the biggest place I've ever lived in (700sqft!) since moving out of my parents home. Having a garage would add another £200/month easily. Having that amount of spare room in a tech hub is a massive advantage!
Apple didn't start in New York, which was a major hub and where space was at way too much of a premium for teenagers to have free reign to build things in a garage. It started in a middle class suburb. The area later became very expensive, largely due to the success of so many startups.
Move to a suburb of Birmingham or Manchester, an hour outside of the city (just as SV was from SF, and then there will be plenty of room for teenagers to build things in garages.
> Americans love their hero-arcs so much that people manage to spin anything into a “coming from nothing story” – even if they got their first investments from their uncle and worked for free in the “garage” of their parents multi-million-dollar house in Palo Alto.