Here's a measure of how disconnected the tech industry has become, again, from reality. Y Combinator, the spray-and-pray incubator run by Paul Graham, has a bootcamp for portfolio companies it brings to the Valley. At one event, Newsweek's Steven Levy reports, entrepreneurs are given a gray T-shirt to remind them of one of Graham's maxims: Make something people want. It's only once they achieve a "liquidity event", such as an acquisition by a larger company, that they'll get the prized black T-shirt, which boasts: "I made something people want." That's preposterous. Y Combinator's one success story, Reddit, sold before it was making revenue. The only "people" Y Combinator cares about are follow-on investors, and fickle corporate development execs. A more truthful boast would be this: "I made something Google thought it wanted."

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