A lot of developers work really, really hard on their
startups for years bootstrapping, just scraping by, and
being ignored by investors because they're not famous.
Their startups have no users and they are just scraping by because they are terrible at marketing, or at knowing what people want. Achieving a low cost-of-customer-acquisition is a real, quantifiable skill.
There are basically zero hot startups that have problems raising money. Getting to "hot" is the hard part, and it is not just making something, but making something people want. Good promotion is just as much of a skill as good UI design.
Yeah well Kevin Rose's startup had a couple hundred thousand users and made $0. So what makes Kevin Rose so amazing that he deserves a bailout, while the rest of the startup world whose name isn't Kevin Rose has to do things the hard way, like grinding it out, or EARNING a job at Google, or starting another startup?
It's funny that you think that "deserve" has anything to do with it. Makes me think of "nice guys" who get passive aggressive when the girl they like doesn't want to go out with them, because they did nice things for her and they "deserve" it. But of course, that's not how it works.
This is the way the game is played. If you don't like it, play another game. Raging against how the rules aren't fair and people aren't getting what they "deserve" just smacks of denial.
There are basically zero hot startups that have problems raising money. Getting to "hot" is the hard part, and it is not just making something, but making something people want. Good promotion is just as much of a skill as good UI design.