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Although your parents built their business from scratch, they benefited from a social, cultural and economic background which led them to more easily attempt an

Although your parents built their business from scratch, they benefited from a social, cultural and economic background which led them to more easily attempt and succeed at starting a business. I am a business owner myself, not coming from a high-income family. I am now part of a network of young entrepreneur/lending scheme for innovative business. A wild guess: 75% of our alumni come from privileged environment: 50% from very wealthy family, 25% had parents who had intellectual jobs (parents were teachers for instance), and about 25% "others". It's all anecdotal evidence, as much as your personal experience is. From your "mother with 3 jobs" example: of course she teaches a lot to her children, of course she has merit! But their children won't feel like they have a "safety net" around them, be it strictly financial or not, provided by their background. Wherever I like it or not, I know that if my business fails tomorrow, my family will be there for me. It can be conscious or not, but for many of "us" entrepreneur, we took a risk and consciously or not, we have a safety net.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
I think our scale and perspective, by being in tech, can be skewed. Over 540,000 new businesses are started EACH MONTH in the US. The sheer number of them should be evidence enough that the vast majority are not started in the context of privilege, wealth or perhaps even a safety net that protects the would-be-entrepreneur from failure. I just don't think this world view is correct. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surprising-statistics-about-small-businesses/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surpris... While it is hard to find this data, the following article claims that "472 million entrepreneurs worldwide attempting to start 305 million companies, approximately 100 million new businesses (or one third) will open each year around the world." That's one hundred million businesses per year world wide launched by nearly half a billion entrepreneurs. I think we can agree there aren't that many wealthy families or entrepreneurs with "I can fail without consequences" safety nets in the world. http://www.moyak.com/papers/business-startups-entrepreneurs.html http://www.moyak.com/papers/business-startups-entrepreneurs....
- karambahh 11y ago
  You are probably right about the tech-induced skew. If a social-studies/economy research reads this, please research this subject... I don't know how it could be done, but it seems very interesting!
- notahacker 11y ago
  Sure, but this being HN, we're interested in the "disrupt an entire industry" type business, which are overwhelmingly started by people with good connections and a top university degree that hasn't burdened them with unsustainable debt. Not to mention overwhelmingly involving people who have chosen to relocate to the highest cost of living parts of the US to try to get on the radar of VCs, and are foregoing the >$100k a year they could easily command in a regular job there. Obviously there are opportunity costs and expectations associated with starting your own plumbing business too, but entrepreneurially minded tradesmen or professional services providers not only possess a higher chance of success, but also much more willingness to shut it down and get a job if it's not generating revenue quickly. And by the time you get to "half a billion entrepreneurs" worldwide we're including people offering goods and services to sale not because of the lure of entrepreneurdom but simply because that's pretty much the only opportunity to earn money that exists in their locality.
  - rebootthesystem 11y ago
    Someone putting it all on the line is putting it all on the line, it doesn't matter if they are selling flowers at the corner or doing something larger than that. A plumber (or a small or trades entrepreneur) doesn't take failure lightly as you've suggested. Regardless of scale, a failure is a traumatic event and fighting against it can take months or years. If you've never lived through the anguish of having a business go bad you might not be equipped to understand this. I have. It's not fun. And, no, you don't think "fuck it, I'll just get a job" three weeks into it. Again, you have to have walked in those shoes in order to truly understand it. I am not trying to insult you, just stating a fact. It is really easy to have all kinds of nice sounding opinions from the outside yet there's only one way to truly understand what it is like to make the decisions to take out a second mortgage on your home to keep people employed, make payroll and try to rescue a business (as I have done). It is impossible to understand something like that without having had skin in the game at some non-trivial business. Talking to a "well weathered" business person is very different from talking to someone who worked for the government or as an employee in the private sector all of their lives. Their understanding of reality is very, very different. That's how you get people saying things like "you didn't build that", because they simply don't have a clue.

rebootthesystem 11y ago

I think our scale and perspective, by being in tech, can be skewed. Over 540,000 new businesses are started EACH MONTH in the US. The sheer number of them should be evidence enough that the vast majority are not started in the context of privilege, wealth or perhaps even a safety net that protects the would-be-entrepreneur from failure. I just don't think this world view is correct. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surprising-statistics-about-small-businesses/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/09/09/16-surpris... While it is hard to find this data, the following article claims that "472 million entrepreneurs worldwide attempting to start 305 million companies, approximately 100 million new businesses (or one third) will open each year around the world." That's one hundred million businesses per year world wide launched by nearly half a billion entrepreneurs. I think we can agree there aren't that many wealthy families or entrepreneurs with "I can fail without consequences" safety nets in the world. http://www.moyak.com/papers/business-startups-entrepreneurs.html http://www.moyak.com/papers/business-startups-entrepreneurs....

karambahh 11y ago
You are probably right about the tech-induced skew. If a social-studies/economy research reads this, please research this subject... I don't know how it could be done, but it seems very interesting!
notahacker 11y ago
Sure, but this being HN, we're interested in the "disrupt an entire industry" type business, which are overwhelmingly started by people with good connections and a top university degree that hasn't burdened them with unsustainable debt. Not to mention overwhelmingly involving people who have chosen to relocate to the highest cost of living parts of the US to try to get on the radar of VCs, and are foregoing the >$100k a year they could easily command in a regular job there. Obviously there are opportunity costs and expectations associated with starting your own plumbing business too, but entrepreneurially minded tradesmen or professional services providers not only possess a higher chance of success, but also much more willingness to shut it down and get a job if it's not generating revenue quickly. And by the time you get to "half a billion entrepreneurs" worldwide we're including people offering goods and services to sale not because of the lure of entrepreneurdom but simply because that's pretty much the only opportunity to earn money that exists in their locality.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Someone putting it all on the line is putting it all on the line, it doesn't matter if they are selling flowers at the corner or doing something larger than that. A plumber (or a small or trades entrepreneur) doesn't take failure lightly as you've suggested. Regardless of scale, a failure is a traumatic event and fighting against it can take months or years. If you've never lived through the anguish of having a business go bad you might not be equipped to understand this. I have. It's not fun. And, no, you don't think "fuck it, I'll just get a job" three weeks into it. Again, you have to have walked in those shoes in order to truly understand it. I am not trying to insult you, just stating a fact. It is really easy to have all kinds of nice sounding opinions from the outside yet there's only one way to truly understand what it is like to make the decisions to take out a second mortgage on your home to keep people employed, make payroll and try to rescue a business (as I have done). It is impossible to understand something like that without having had skin in the game at some non-trivial business. Talking to a "well weathered" business person is very different from talking to someone who worked for the government or as an employee in the private sector all of their lives. Their understanding of reality is very, very different. That's how you get people saying things like "you didn't build that", because they simply don't have a clue.