To people wondering why you would want to move to a standalone solution while Medium provides you with distribution and community - it does not (anymore). Well, not to the extent that justifies ceding the control over the representation of your content.
Tl;dr: Medium's practice of paywalling articles and preferential treatment of those articles over public ones kills the reach of your content. Also, they lock you in by removing the feature of attaching your own domain name. Also, their weird upvote mechanism. Also, the dysfunctional comment system. I can go on and on.
He might not have a nuanced understanding of this issue (although, we can't be sure, can we?), but it doesn't make his tweet inaccurate. He literally was talking about "starting startups" and "rich kids". You can be poor and still start a successful startup.
Yes, privileged background is an amplifier and higher starting point. But you don't need any money to make a startup today. Generally, you need a computer with internet access. Although, even a computer is optional as I know some founders who started with just a smartphone (they were building Instagram accounts).
Having said that, there are some people on this planet who are truly underprivileged and can't afford not even a device with internet connection but the very idea that startups could be built by individuals. That's scary.
Yes, Airbnb founders are privileged, but the mob attacking Paul is missing the message. If you are underprivileged, well... tough luck, you're not gonna build a unicorn. However, you can build a $1000, $10000, or $100k startup.
Also, people there are conflating the terms "rich" and "privileged." You can have everything Airbnb's founders have and still be poor.