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Comment by copx | Hacker News Reader

>Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford.

That's the key part of the "entrepreneur" story the OP missed. From Gates over Zuckerberg to Musk, all these people were born rich, into well-connected families. If you do not belong to this ultra-privileged class of people, your chances of doing what they did is practically zero.

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Indeed, this has been a topic of many discussions in the past and I do believe that connections and privilege form a more important factor in success than many would like to admit.

Connections, privilege, but also it's about personal net capital invested. Entrepreneurs with ordinary net worth are underdiversified, with a concentration in their own business. If you have high net worth, you have less exposure so the stakes are lower and you require a lower rate of return to compensate you for the risk (CAPM).

There's no way I wanted the pressure to run a business in my 20s. A decade or so later with a cushy job gives me the financial freedom to do this without the high risk of failure, since if it tanks I'll still have other investments. Most entrepreneurs are in their 40s apparently according to research.

If this were true, wouldn't the other side of that statement be true? Since all startups seem to be privileged white males - shouldn't they all succeed and have funding?

where did the previous poster say "white males"?

I think i was replying to a different comment, and accidentally placed it under this one.

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