The wealthy parents of "self made" billionaires
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No, he didn’t do that all. He’s just providing context about the early beginnings of Amazon that allowed Bezos to built this. Bezos deserves credit for what he built but let’s not act as if he came from the gutter.
It doesn't, that's true, but it does make it less impressive.
If you gave me 1 million, I'm going to bet against myself creating a trillion dollar company.
If you gave a bunch of smart people 1 million, I'd bet against 99.9% of them replicating Bezos' success.
Pre-family investment, Bezos was already a super investor at a HF.
Sure, technically, but you know that's vague and dismissive of Bezos' outperformance.
My point stands that there are plenty of other people out there that get similar wealth boosts and can't replicate Bezos.
The simple fact of knowing but there's a place to fall back on for a few weeks or a few months that isn't flipping burgers or scraping together money to get your car out of impound because it wouldn't start and you had to leave it on the street for a week to get it looked at. The ability to give yourself the liberty of taking time away from "producing stuff" to attend some social event or mixer where you might meet someone who could put you in touch with others who are interested in your idea, without having to cold call grind every single investment lead. The network that having this kind of money around brings to you. these are incalculable advantages that are often glossed over or dismissed when arguments about supposed envy and jealousy of others' mega-success come up.
And even more intangible but still very present in the mindset of people who are trying to get a startup off the ground at all, is that having family with this kind of money available, even if they don't give you a single cent of it, is likely to make you feel more comfortable about taking a risk because it's very likely that your family understands the upsides of taking a risk. Which is completely different from coming from a background where everyone close to you expects you to work an honest trade or profession for a regular paycheck, and with whom you have to rationalize your life choices - why didn't you just become a doctor or a lawyer, etc. - always on the defense about why you were doing what you're doing instead of getting even notional support from them instead.
That's OK? That's quite a controversial statement.
At birth, children will hidden from the eyes of the parents and transferred to the community. The child will be part of the community and the community will provide for all equally. They will be rotated out on a weekly basis amongst couples to be raised and nurtured temporarily, so every child will have the closest possible exact same upbringing.
Those who grow tall too fast will have weights put on them, those who show intellectual aptitude will be given booze to slow their development.
Then one day a child escapes, runs through the corn fields to freedom, and immediately gets run over by a AI controlled John Deere harvester, for the children are fast, but the harvester is faster.
Agred, we should make the artificial boosting of prospects for some kids and handicapping of others based on their respective's parent's wealth illegal.
>Those who grow tall too fast will have weights put on them, those who show intellectual aptitude will be given booze to slow their development.
And those sliding on slippery slopes would have to wear high-friction fabrics to be made to slide slower.
Or perhaps natural talents and throwing money to boost some children's life prospects while others are left behind (from no quality or action of their own) are not the same thing.
Who would have thought?
Although my take is I disagree with both points - yes maybe connections and status may allow some people to be successful, and extreme poverty can hinder success. But on average I don't know how much that matters. I think someone like geohot could be successful without any network or without anyone's help. He has an attitude that's geared for curiousity and making a contribution
Also having a successful person literally raise you from birth would probably contain a lot of lessons about sucess
I think assertions like this miss alot because they automatically assume the wealthy parents helped them financially. It seems to feel of sort of idolizing of money, thinking money can solve most problems and achieve a great many things. I think that's a popular but flawed belief.
As someone who started a moderately successful business in the past, I don't think just having money to pour into a startup is as important or as deciding a factor as people think
Miguel Bezos (Jeff Bezos's father) was a refugee from Cuba. Miguel came to the USA empty handed, got a scholarship to university, worked at Exxon for 32 years, invested in his son's (jeff bezos's) startup and became a billionaire because of that investment.
He said nothing of the sort, just that 245k sure helps when you're starting a business. Maybe his dad should have let him fail so he could have thought up a self-sustaining business from the get go.
Actually, it is not that out of reach that a person who is a professional such as an engineer or a doctor or lawyer to have $250,000 to be able to give to an adult child.
And it is possible for a poor person to encourage their children to study and become a doctor or engineer (see for example the Asian immigrant communities).
Thus a person who comes to the US poor, could have a billionaire grandchild.
And no other country offers this kind of opportunity at scale the way America does which is why so many people from all over the world endeavor to come here.
The rest of the money (excluding his own savings) he got the old fashion way, begging VCs and other investors.
The Asian immigrant communities benefit from a much more stable environment than other immigrant or domestic communities have (and less systemic racism and exclusion). The same is not the case for the black or latino communities for example.
And even if the child of poor immigrant community (Asian or whatever) studies hard to become a doctor or engineer, they'd still have to do it under less opportunities, with less connections, more sacrifices, in worse school districts, with less access to tutors, with more stressful family environment (even less nutricion, more need to move, in more dangerous neighborhoods), etc than the child from a upper middle class or rich family. That's the injustice and lack of meritocracy.
The same can be said for other white communities too like the Irish and the Italians.
That's because the Asian community has had the (stabler, more beneficial) conditions I've speak about for 3-4 decades at least -- it's not the time of the railroads of the WWII camps. Meanwhile, blacks and latinos still face those issues to this day.
Even so, even those Asians from poor backgrounds who do make it, have to work at it far harder than a middle class/rich kid. Equality is not just about a class of people (e.g. poor immigrants) getting the same outcomes. It's also not having to work harder and under more adverse conditions to get them.
(The injustice is the same to how to women had to be much better and work harder to "prove themselves" in order to get them same career outcomes as men).
how is living across the globe from your extended family leading to a more stable environment?
until recently, did asians not have to achieve higher scores than black/latino to get the same opportunities? how is this not exactly systemic racism?
In that your real family is not looked down upon (not as much as a poor black family, they're even a "positive bias" for asians from whites), denied loans or opportunities in the same way, your community is not rife with drugs and violence, your school district is not as underfunded, cops don't just shoot you in the same rate, and so on.
>until recently, did asians not have to achieve higher scores than black/latino to get the same opportunities? how is this not exactly systemic racism?
It is. From all I've read, Asians faced racism, and suffered from ill-conceived programs to artificially boost other communities that excluded them, too. At least though they got a stabler environment, more acceptance, and more opportunities (see above) to achieve those higher scores than black/latino kids, even considering the "affirmitive action" and such (which only benefited a handful of black kids anyway).
This is because asset price inflation has grown at much higher rates that consumer prices (CPI).
It's observably true that many high-profile founders and execs, especially in the US, come from well-off families.
What's the lesson to draw from this? IMHO even if "my parents never gave ME a cent" is true (as it is for me, btw), how do I help myself by dwelling on that?
We could increase taxes to provide better education and social services and increase opportunity for all (a la Finland), but is that a popular sentiment in the tech community?