[...] Don’t dig for gold: Sell shovels to all the suckers who think they’ll get rich digging for gold. To post an ad on Fiverr was to announce one’s status as an easy mark. To hawk get-rich-quick manuals to all those eager Fiverrers, however, was to join the exalted ranks of the shovel merchants. My Airbnb landlord, I realized, was a shovel merchant. As was the company that rented me server space for website hosting. As were the “startup community organizers” selling tickets to conferences and networking parties. As were the startup awards shows and Hacker News and the whole Silicon Valley economic apparatus promoting the ideal of individual achievement. We startup wannabes were not entrepreneurs. We were suckers for the shovel merchants, who were much cleverer than the thick-skulled “innovators” who did all the work while trading away the rewards. Selling shovels wasn’t the only way to make money in tech, but it was … the Silicon Valley way.