I don't quite see why the quote from PG doesn't hold true for the rest of the population. I've come to the personal conclusion that tokenadult's last paragraph holds true for everything in life. I don't believe life is deterministic as you seem to imply, that your genetic makeup and upbringing set in stone. I see it as more like a tree, even if a tree grows in wind and bends, you can always straighten it out (to a certain age/size), it's hard but not impossible.

In reality, the hardest things to come up with may be the ideas, and he solicits those for free. It's a bit of scam, really.

I don't understand how else an investor-founder relationship would work. Should he pay to listen to ideas/pitches before deciding whether or not to invest? Do you think NDAs should be the industry norm? Please elaborate.

Real discussions are bidirectional. By assuming a haughty 'we hold the cards' position, and soliciting info from those looking for funding, they often ask for lots of details before promising even a comment. A better service might provide a forum for Q&A in both directions before details were shared. Ideally, it would also be global, and take centralized parties out of the equation entirely.

You've misunderstood me. The part I've found motivating was that these seemingly amazing people are also regular people. I'm also more interested in bootstrapping my business without funding so I was never part of "PG's business model" as you would put it.

Cool. :)