"why I bristle when many in the Valley - PG included - keep disparaging non-technical people when they want to start a tech company."
PG's outlook (if you are correct) is based on his background perhaps - this from his wikipedia page:
"Graham has a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Cornell University.... He then attended Harvard University, earning Master of Science (1988) and Doctor of Philosophy (1990) degrees in Applied Sciences with a specialization in computer science.... He has also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence."
From this I can deduce that PG wasn't "business minded" in high school although maybe he did run some business on the side etc to make money (I don't know). But he wasn't interested enough in it to attend a business school as an undergraduate. If that had been the case instead of going to Cornell he might have chosen Wharton for undergraduate business. In Wharton UG (I graduated) most of the people - the majority of people that I met - knew that they wanted to be in business just like some people know growing up they want to be doctors. Only difference is those people can do something before college obviously nobody is going to practice medicine prior to training.
So I would suspect that PG's view of the world was based upon his ability to program and put together viaweb and without that programming skill (especially back then) viaweb probably wouldn't have happened. (Morris on the other hand, while a programmer, is a bit devious (worm) so that definitely is a quality that is helpful in business.
If I am wrong and I don't know what I'm talking about, then instead of saying "If you don't know what you're talking about, then why are you talking about it?" why don't you provide backup for your statement "you don't have any idea what Robert is like" which refutes the fact that I think someone who did what Morris did is "devious"?
I would make the same statement about Steve Jobs with regards to the blue boxes.
With respect to Morris, this statement (wikipedia) to me indicates he is "devious":
"According to its creator, the Morris worm was not written to cause damage, but to gauge the size of the Internet. However, the worm was released from MIT to disguise the fact that the worm originally came from Cornell."
PG's outlook (if you are correct) is based on his background perhaps - this from his wikipedia page:
"Graham has a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Cornell University.... He then attended Harvard University, earning Master of Science (1988) and Doctor of Philosophy (1990) degrees in Applied Sciences with a specialization in computer science.... He has also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence."
From this I can deduce that PG wasn't "business minded" in high school although maybe he did run some business on the side etc to make money (I don't know). But he wasn't interested enough in it to attend a business school as an undergraduate. If that had been the case instead of going to Cornell he might have chosen Wharton for undergraduate business. In Wharton UG (I graduated) most of the people - the majority of people that I met - knew that they wanted to be in business just like some people know growing up they want to be doctors. Only difference is those people can do something before college obviously nobody is going to practice medicine prior to training.
So I would suspect that PG's view of the world was based upon his ability to program and put together viaweb and without that programming skill (especially back then) viaweb probably wouldn't have happened. (Morris on the other hand, while a programmer, is a bit devious (worm) so that definitely is a quality that is helpful in business.