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Comment by scottLobster | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate LazerPig's take on the subject (The whole video is a fun watch, but this is the yacht specific part): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRDPd0MiopM&t=375s

Essentially it's keeping up with the joneses. Turns out rich people are, on average, more lucky than they are original or skilled. They're generally subject to the same personality flaws as any person making 40k/year or less, but whereas the person making 40k/year has financial constraints on how much they can indulge their character flaws, the deca-millionaire or greater does not. Money is an accelerant, and if you're already deeply insecure (as most obsessive workaholics that become billionaires are) money will only make you more so.

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Bezos was also incredibly successful in another domain before starting Amazon - he was the youngest senior VP at DE Shaw. So maybe it wasn't just luck.

Plenty of hard-working Senior VPs at hedge funds never become billionaires. Hedge funds themselves tend to rely on a good deal of luck plus skilled marketing. If Bezos had been working at DE Shaw during an economic downturn, would he have had the same future?

Was it "just" luck? Of course not. But I'd argue luck is the primary difference between being in the top 1% vs being in the top 0.001%

Indeed. I'd guess extreme hard work is a given for at least thousand times more people than number of billionaires in the world. So great luck or series of great lucks is one thing that would set billionaires apart.

When you're talking "self made billionaire" I think you're picking from a select enough group that "very lucky a few times" is still within reason.

Nobody said anything about it being "just luck". It's a combination of both luck and skill. It's like a pro golfer getting a hole in one. Obviously there skill contributed a lot, but the fact that they're still rare means a fair amount of luck is involved.

There could be 1,000 people just as talented as Bezos, but if they aren't in the right place at the right time they just simply aren't going to accumulate over 100 billion dollars

The $245,000 loan from his parents in 1995 to help start Amazon begs to differ.

That was a first round of funding, the same terms as other non-family members got. It wasn't a gift or anything like that, and it is why Jeff's parents are now billionaires.

I don't think DE Shaw VP would need a 250K loan from his working class parents.

Everything is just luck. Genetics, upbringing, and environment all strongly influence skill and success. With different luck he could have been the youngest gang leader in the hood.

It's luck that you weren't born a lettuce I guess, but that is certainly an expansive view of luck.

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