“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress (source)
I don’t get it, what does “a temporarily embarrassed founder” mean?
It’s a combination of “temporarily embarrassed future billionaire” with the (mostly mythical) “garage software business founder”.
Many software programmers (including me) spent the first decade of our careers sure we would produce a world-shaking program in our garage, and then found a company to scale it to the world.
I don’t get it, what does “a temporarily embarrassed founder” mean?
It’s a reference to this quote:
Edit: apparently the original John Steinbeck quote was:
It’s a combination of “temporarily embarrassed future billionaire” with the (mostly mythical) “garage software business founder”.
Many software programmers (including me) spent the first decade of our careers sure we would produce a world-shaking program in our garage, and then found a company to scale it to the world.
“i would totally be a founder right now if it weren’t for [excuse xyz]”