I’m over this “god-like” mentality around tech founders of startups. There is a lot more that goes into building a company.

You can get a skewed view of startup founders by visiting sites like TechCrunch, because they mostly cover the successes of founders, whereas if you ask all founders, the road the success wasn't easy to navigate. Take everything you read with a grain of salt.

This god-like image only prevails in a handful of enclaves and in the tech media where people crawl up each others a**es.

Outside of that, in 99% of the country, they are viewed as punks, spoiled kids, and funemployed 20somethings who should rather get a real job first and learn about real life before playing with OPM.

People focus on the technology because they assume selling is easy.

My CTO wrote 3000 lines of Perl (in one method, of course) once that works close to 70% of the time. That, and a bunch of bluster, makes him a technology expert, quoted in a bunch of places.

Most people in the tech press doesn't have the ability to understand why that's not impressive, and the few that do really don't want to stop the gravy train. Why the hell would you get a quote from a lowly mid-level developer when there's some self-proclaimed visionary offering you $1 ideas at a $10 price? You like gravy trains, right?

Even business journalists with a decidedly pro-business slant, like at the Wall Street Journal, are more critical (in both the negative and positive sense of the word) of the companies they cover than all but a few tech journalists and tech media outlets. The non-tech press isn't any better.

Trade journals are much better about this stuff, but nobody reads those.

Agreed. Tech makes everything easier, but a shitty product is a shitty product no matter how gifted the programmer/designers are.

"There is a lot more that goes into building a company."
For instance ?

Dont worry, the old adage that you better be nice to those you meet on your way up because they'll be there on your way down applies nicely, very nicely to the f'd up world of tech and start-ups.

Throw in the fact that many of these douche bags are young <30, and you have a guarantee of failure and humble pie... Having been through this racket many times in my 20 year career, its universal that these asswipes will get their due... whether its a fall from grace, a self realization or life just serving them their due... it will happen and they'll suffer. So dont envy them, instead pity them as they lay down the foundation for their own demise...