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Comment by mandevil | Hacker News Reader

The biggest thing is about "Amazon was started in a garage" is that Jeff Bezos had worked at hedge fund D.E. Shaw (founded in 1989) from 1990-1994 (that's where he met MacKenzie, she was an admin staff, he was a finance guy). So he had hedge fund money already before he founded Amazon.

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Unpopular take. While I agree with the sentiment, I still think it took some fortitude to walk away from the golden handcuffs of a successful finance career to do an Internet startup at that time. Bezos said he ran the idea past his boss at the time, and the boss said something like "that's a good idea, but not for someone who already has a great job like you." So I do applaud him for that. Bloomberg made a similar transition.

Suppose Bezos burns 80% of his net worth playing with his willy in his garage and decides to wrap it up. He goes straight back to his cushy HF job, 3 years behind in his career if he can't manage to market his experience as some kind of lofty journey landing him a better role than when he left. Let's not pretend it was brave - he had the foundations to take the risks and still come out just fine.

Nonsense. He had comfort and security to fall back on. His family was also loaded.

He wasn't walking away from anything. He would have been fine if it didn't work.

The reality is he had a safety net to fall back on. 99% of people do not.

From the point of view of a good 50% or so of the world (if not more), pretty much every Westerner has comfort and safety to fall back on.

Except it is simply not true that every Westerner has safety to fall back on. There would be no homelessness crisis if this was true.

I said "pretty much". The homelessness crisis in, say, the US, affects a relatively small portion of the population; from quick looking up figures, it's less than 1% of the population.

I'm no expert on any of this, but as far as I understand it, homelessness is usually 1. transitory, and 2. usually tied to other serious issues like mental health issues, drug abuse etc. It's usually not a "lack of resources".

The homelessness goes up and down woth economy and housing availability. Sure, people worh mental health issues are first to loose ... and being homeless makes all the mental health issues worst.

Like, common. And beyond homeless, you have people one paycheck away from being homeless. And people unable to pay for drugs they need - like insuline.

Yes, if all you know about West is what you see in movies, then everyone is rich.

> 99% of people do not.

Which really reflects to how most people's parents/family/society is pathetic.

Now I'm not merely talking about a safely net after one burns up millions in a startup but I'm taking about say a safety net after loosing a job etc. I think most people (like me) would be just happy to have stability in life rather than yearn for being financially successful. The precarious existence is depressing.

Also his granddad was loaded.

Yeah an unsurprisingly large percent of self-styled.. self-made billionaires certainly came from close to or actual millionaire backgrounds.

I suppose it shouldn't be terribly surprising as being successful requires hard work & a good idea. But it REALLY REALLY HELPS to also have a risk appetite, capital, and connections.. which are what coming from even moderate wealth provides.

>it REALLY REALLY HELPS to also have a risk appetite, capital, and connections.. which are what coming from even moderate wealth provides.

I graduated in 2008, and I watched classmates make the 'insane' decision to risk it all and go off and try to found startups. Inevitably, some failed, but to my shock it wasn't the end of the world for them? In one case the 'bank of mom and dad' paid rent until they got back on their feet, and in the other, they moved into an ADU in their parent's back yard.

That's when it hit me that those folks took risks because they could afford to. I was worried about winding up sleeping under a bridge. That concern was as foreign to them as the thought of having a safety net to fall back on was to me.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076

"Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."

Wow, this is a great analogy. I'm stealing it

Except most entrepreneurs are from poor backgrounds. Maybe not in software but everything from lawn care to selling cocaine is entrepreneurship.

The money is in software/tech startups though.

Don’t underestimate contracting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Binladin_Group

I thought it was his stepfather that gave him the ~$250k seed money (which is like $550k in today's money)

It also overlooks the fact that what Amazon was doing was outright illegal for years and they never got handed their ass on a platter.

For years, Amazon enabled everybody to bypass sales tax which gave Amazon a 4-8% advantage on books over brick and mortar that had to pay both rent and sales tax.

Quite a few of the "successful" tech companies followed this pattern: Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, etc. all engaged in blatantly illegal behavior to become big.

It was not illegal. Businesses are not required to charge sales tax in states where they have no operations.

The people receiving stuff from Amazon were supposed to report and pay the sales tax.

If you or I aided and abetted widespread tax evasion, we would get our asses handed to us in court.

If you had said "were" instead of "are" this would be a true statement. Since South Dakota v. Wayfair in 2018, states have been allowed to charge sales taxes on businesses that have no operations in their state. That decision overturned 1992's Quill v. North Dakota, which held as you say. But that is no longer the law of the land.

The 5-4 majority in 2018 included two justices who were part of the unanimous holding in 1992 (Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas), voting to overturn their own decision from a quarter century before.

>For years, Amazon enabled everybody to bypass sales tax which gave Amazon a 4-8% advantage on books over brick and mortar that had to pay both rent and sales tax.

In 1992, SCOTUS ruled in Quill vs. North Dakota[0] that a business must have a "nexus" in a particular state to be required to collect sales taxes. I'd note that Amazon was founded in 1994.

And so, yes Amazon did have an advantage WRT sales taxes. But it wasn't, as you said, "outright illegal" until 2018 with SCOTUS' ruling in South Dakota vs. Wayfair Inc.[1] At which time, IIRC, Amazon continued collecting sales taxes that it had already been collecting in many states, as already it had nexuses (warehouses, distribution centers, etc.) in many places.

I'd note that I'm not "defending" Amazon here. They do plenty of shady stuff WRT pricing, as well as abusing their employees, suppliers and third-party sellers.

Why don't we take them to task for that stuff instead of making stuff up? Just sayin'

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_Corp._v._North_Dakota

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair%2C_Inc.

>outright illegal for years and they never got handed their ass on a platter

Why doing something that is merely illegal deserves a punishment, in YOUR books?

Why don't you see that many laws are the in place serve some cartel or other, to be outright unjust?

Regulatory entrepreneurship.