"I am a young, white, educated male... I got really, really lucky. And life isn't fair."

Those are the words of Evan Spiegel, the billionaire founder of photo-messaging app Snapchat. According to Forbes, he is the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. Born in 1990, he hit billionaire status aged just 24.

The question is, how did he get so successful?

Is it due to his merit, or due to luck?

While Snapchat’s parent-company Snap Inc is now hitting the headlines for having a hard time on the markets at the moment - falling to below IPO price for the first time earlier this week - I thought I’d share a sneak-peek excerpt of my upcoming book: “The Unfair Advantage” about Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, and use his story as a case study in ‘startup privilege’.

To contextualise it, I don’t know if you’ve noticed that Silicon Valley and the Tech Startup world in general loves to present itself as a progressive, meritocratic place - with those talented and hard-working enough inevitably rising up above the parapet and reaping the rewards for all the blood, sweat and tears they have put in.

My 18 years of experience in the London tech scene tells me that, unfortunately, this is nothing but a PR fantasy. The reality is, the tech world, like many other sectors of the economy, has problems and barriers too numerous to count to be anywhere near relying on merit alone.

Take a look around, from Silicon Valley to London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’, you’ll see private-school-educated young men (and it’s almost always men) from pedigreed universities, with successful parents and middle-to-upper class backgrounds dominating this space.

And while there are many reasons for this, ultimately it comes down to 3 Cs:

1. Confidence - the faith that they can do it. They’re instilled with this confidence from a young age from parents, tutors and top schools.
2. Connections - the people they (or their parents) know who have done it before and can advise, mentor and potentially provide that early seed capital
3. Contingencies - the safety net. The fall-back. The knowledge that they won’t starve to death as mummy and daddy will look after them if things go pear-shaped.

Upstream, these 3 C’s come ultimately from one source: Status. What these young men have above all else, not discounting of course talent, intelligence and hustle (which, don’t get me wrong, they have in droves) is socioeconomic status.

While there are notable exceptions, like Steve Jobs and others meritocracy and full social mobility is still a distant pipe-dream, and we need to work harder to do better.

Let’s dive into that Evan Spiegel case study then. The following is from my upcoming book, The Unfair Advantage.

To give you an idea of just how ‘lucky’ he is, here is a bit of background about him:

Spiegel grew up in a $2 million house in Pacific Palisades, a ritzy Los Angeles enclave just east of Malibu. They had five luxury cars, and memberships in at least 4 ultra-exclusive country clubs.

His childhood was filled with regular trips to Europe, the Bahamas and Maui, staying in Four Seasons resorts. Young Evan enjoyed jet skiing, wakeboarding, and on one occasion, he and his father even went helicopter snowboarding in Canada. Helicopter snowboarding (I hadn’t even heard of this before!).

Spiegel spent his early years at a posh prep school called Crossroads, which cost tens of thousands of dollars, also attended by Tinder co-founder Sean Rad, and lots of Hollywood stars, including Kate Hudson, Jonah Hill, Jack Black, Gwyneth Paltrow, to name just a few.

His father, alumni of Stanford, helped him get into the prestigious tech-startup-founder-dream school, and using his connections introduced him to Peter Wendell, VC and founder of Sierra Ventures, the $1.5 billion Silicon Valley venture capital firm, which has invested in over 200 successful tech companies and many lucrative IPOs. Named by Forbes magazine as one of the 100 best venture investors in the United States, Wendell is not a bad connection to have.

In Wendell’s class, he met Scott Cook, the billionaire founder and CEO of successful tech startup Intuit, who became his mentor, and also later invested in Snapchat’s first round of funding.

All these early leg-ups in life, mixed with an undoubtedly very strong ability, level of intelligence and innovation that Evan had played a big role in his success.

Schmidt, CEO of Google, later said about Evan: “He has superb manners, which he says he got from his mother. He credits his father’s long legal calls, which he overheard, to giving him perspective on business and structure as a very young man.”

This practical intelligence he got from his parents was invaluable.

He even used his inherited business nous to negotiate hard when fundraising, famously telling IVP’s Dennis Phelps that he was unwilling to accept the firm’s standard investment terms. “If you want standard terms, invest in a standard company,” Mr. Phelps recalled Mr. Spiegel telling him. IVP went on to invest in Snap’s third financing round in 2013.

Spiegel is upfront in acknowledging how many breaks he got along the way. Contrary to the typical 'buckle down', 'burn the midnight oil' and 'hustle your arse off' advice that's all-too-common in the tech world, he says "it's not about working harder, it's about working the system"

Do you see all the personal competitive advantages Evan Spiegel had?

I like to call these: unfair advantages.

I don’t use the word ‘unfair’ in a negative way. We all have unfair advantages, we just need to identify and take advantage of them as long as it’s ethical. Spiegel, for example, is actually refreshingly self-aware and honest about his privileges, and this is something to be commended.

If you’re in the startup world, what’s been your experience of privilege? Or is it just the domain of middle class and posh boys with connections.

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This post led to us publishing our bestselling book The Unfair Advantage you can grab a copy from all good book shops & Amazon.