A nontrivial part of the money coming in came from investment capital; the remainder came from enterprise sales. In neither case did the decision to give us money have a basis of a rigorous technical analysis of our engineering output, and especially for the VCs it was based on a perception that we were a good investment.

What fuels that perception? Get some founders from famous schools. File some patents because patents look good, not because you particularly need to protect these inventions. Engage in thought leadership. Land a customer because you care about their name more than about how much they'll pay you. Convince some Gartner analyst who'll never use your product that you're innovative. Bring in a management team with connections. Design products for what journalists want more than what end users want. Hire some kids from famous schools.

(I should note that I believe my previous employer was nonetheless steadily solving actual problems, that they were paying me to solve actual problems, and that they were well-managed. But in order to keep doing that they had to make it to profitability, and the path there involved the above pressures.)

Business people don't care about privilege directly, but if these pressures are around -- which they are in practice -- privilege ends up being correlated with having positive leverage on profits.