This is an entirely different country from what it was in the 19th century. Although early industrial America was brutal in a lot of ways that our society isn't, it was possible to "work your way up" then. Now it's not. The work environment in 1900 had a one-tier society-- with extreme inequality and brutality within that tier, but it was still only one tier. Line workers could become foremen who could become managers who could become executives. Now we have multiple tiers and it's nearly impossible to jump from one to another. The people who are running large companies today never worked "regular jobs"-- except during high school and college, maybe, where it doesn't count because career and lifestyle are not on the line-- they went into business school and, although they became "only" middle managers after that, they started on the inside track.
My family does the exact same thing, except a bit faster. My sister already went to college. My relatives are business owners of nail shops. Granted it's a only a single anecdotal point.
Beside, startups founders plunge automatically to "poverty" level just so they can start their own business and then rise to millionaire status or more if they's successful.
To do a startup, you have to be middle-class, at least, from the start, because otherwise you have no hope of getting the funding or building up the savings.
The most successful startups are an exception to the fact of American society being tiered, but these types of sociological statements always admit exceptions. If you want to see our tiered society in action, note how difficult it is to get venture capital and press coverage if you're not from an upper-class background, and compare it to how easily rich kids are able to get these resources.
You don't understand how press coverage works. Being upper-class has nothing to do with it, unless you are princess diana. You just pay people to do your PR. They get the story into the press for you. The PR people themselves are NEVER from upper-class backgrounds... it's a pretty ghetto occupation to get into in the first place. In fact they are usually from such limited backgrounds in the first place that half of them will do the work for almost nothing. (but it's the ones who charge a lot who you really want to hire)
You know nothing about the upper class. They don't need to hire PR firms (which is very expensive and unaffordable to a bootstrapped startup). They have their well-connected daddies and uncles make phone calls to get press coverage, etc.
