The secret sauce is "Make something people want" (YC's motto)

No, instead "make people want something"

Steve Jobs was a master of this. The first car itself was heavily marketed before release. You have to make people believe that their life will be improved by this thing. Failure to do so, even when you genuinely believe it can improve lives, will leave you in the dust while someone else eventually comes along with a nicer story.

Of course, if you don't even believe in your hypothetical rubbish product it's hard to make that storytelling believable. Even more so when you've become so deluded in your own thing that you can't tell what impact it does have.

A lot of times people don't know they want something until it is in front of them.

And even more times people thought they were being Henry Ford or Steve Jobs when they were actually making something nobody wanted.

The trick: they didn't actually need or want it until you put it in front of them, engineered to induce the want.

Here's an anecdote.

I used Linux as my main desktop OS for like 15 years. One day someone paid me to write some Mac software for them. I did the project on a $150 ancient mac from a second hand store, and partially on Linux.

When the project ended I bought a new macbook when i got paid because i thought "ok, there's money in doing mac stuff, i better have current hardware". Linux was still my main desktop OS.

2 years later I switched my desktop to Mac OS too because after using it, it was simply far less annoying than either alternative.

So when you see people talking about the reality distortion field and why pay extra for Macs... take it with a grain of salt. It's likely they just looked at prices and guessed it's not worth it, maybe thought about induced want. So was I before I got paid to use one :)

The true is Windows 10/11, Linux and MacOs are all terrible desktop operating systems. Windows 2000 for example was better than any current OS. It comes down to what types of bugs and issues you're more inclined to tolerate.

Make something people want, and will pay for.

I’ll take it a step further: Only make what people have committed to paying for.

The secret sauce is generational wealth. People whose parents are extremely well off have a larger chance at succeeding in building their business. Not only does their parents have money, but also the right connections at that wealth level. They basically manufacture their own luck, and their money buys time and labor to get their product first to market.

Sometimes the average joe can taste certain components of that secret sauce, because they're brilliant and hard-working, and was at the right time and place. But it's a very rare occurrence.

>They basically manufacture their own luck

VC does not only offer money but also connections. Even more so does YC and their startup school. If that's not enough, a unicorn is waiting to combine kickstarter.com and a social network to allow people to monetize their connections.

The limiting factor is the willingness to give up the comfort of a 9-5 job. In a world of working spouses, one partner can always risk their career, especially when the children have grown up a bit.

Paul Orfalea had trouble in school and couldn't hold a job. He started Kinko's because selling things to students that he knew they needed was about all he could do. By carefully building an organization that can use modest employees to serve modest needs he ended up building a business that he sold for around five billion dollars. That isn't a story about secret sauce or generational wealth. It is a story about desperation and making one's own way after being shut out of other opportunities. That seems to emphasize the many ways model over your preferred wealth dominated narrative. Of course wealth may be involved, but that is just one of many potential driving factors.