5 ms·

I feel like the majority of people make the mistake of reflecting on themselves and saying "if only I had this", or "if only I wasn't disadvantaged in this way"

• zasz 11y ago
  Are you seriously saying that everyone's disadvantages are the same? Wow.
  • anovikov 11y ago
    Easily. If someone comes from a rich family it's in a way harder for him to build a startup: he will not belong to the demographic of 90%+ potential users of any startup, and it will be hard for him to understand what they want and how to pitch it to them, same thing about employees - it will be hard to lead and motivate people not understanding what the people who need to work to pay their bills feel. This is my personal experience, while i am not rich in the 'first world' sense, when i lived in a small provincial town in Russia 9 years ago i was rich in a relative sense - if you define rich as '1%'. My attempt to build a catering business failed miserably because of these items. Programming - where my clients are of same demographic as myself - works way better.
    • akjetma 11y ago
      A rich person can throw money at this problem or at least has the financial and temporal capacity to research it and gain an academic understanding. I know the conventional wisdom is to build something that you would use yourself, but towards the later stages of most b2b companies--especially ones that deal with enterprise customers--the customer is just as alien to anyone as poor people are to you. This is such a tiny issue compared to being poor.
      • eropple 11y ago
        Seriously. "I am rich so I don't know how to make a vehicle to make even more money" is so transformatively different from "I grew up without enough opportunities to know how to function in polite (white) society" that my jaw bunched reading it. This industry makes me profoundly sad sometimes. Often.
        • anovikov 11y ago
          Making more money out of existing money is not a startup. It's an investment. Basically a reverse to startup.
          • eropple 11y ago
            I am morbidly curious what you think the point of a startup is if not to transform existing money into more money. Or what you think investors do with regard to those startups.
            • anovikov 11y ago
              A startup is about using other people's money as a leverage for your idea/work. An investment is about being on the other side. A rich guy who wants to make more money in the tech field will be better off doing angel investing, literally getting on the other side of the counter with startup founders. After all, capital isn't hard to come by these days. Even outside of the Valley. I have raised (and sadly, burned uselessly) money and it was no way hard. So the factor of having money doesn't mean much. Apart from that, a rich guy will have some advantages (self-confidence, ability to take risks, good initial network) and some disadvantages. Among these are poor understanding of audience for most kinds of ideas, pressure from high status relatives ('startups are hipster toys, you have to go to business school'), high opportunity costs. If we look at successful startup founders, very few come from rich families. Also, having to raise outside money provides a reality check, something which a rich kid will code using his own money has a higher chance to become just a toy - facing investors provides validation and feedback you can't ignore. Raising money is something people think is hard, and it's no way fun to do, so they avoid it whenever they can, so someone who doesn't need it will probably not do it. Which leaves him all alone with his vision...
  • sandstrom 11y ago
    I think he's point is that there are also disadvantages of growing up under high income (of course it depends on parenting too). Too spoiled, cannot relate to ordinary people, etc. I seem to remember that many entrepreneurs are born to upper middle class parents. Not spoiled enough that they cannot work, but still fortunate to have a safe upbringing and be risk tolerant. (I do agree with you that people are born with very different prospects depending (among other things) on parents social-economic status)
    • istjohn 11y ago
      Wealth is not a disadvantage. Period.
      • oldmanjay 11y ago
        The point you seem to be missing is that relative wealth is not a trump card that erases all opposition magically.
      • sandstrom 11y ago
        Getting spoiled as a child can be definitely be a disadvantage later in life :)
  • pessimizer 11y ago
    It's called the Law of Averages. It's a type of magical thinking.
• rdlecler1 11y ago
  I'm not talking about reflection at all. AS you are going through your life you are very aware of the advantages other may have. When I was going to University I also had to 30 hours a week. While friends from wealthier families could spend their extra efforts studying. In the summer, I couldn't quit my crappy job to take an internship because I needed that job in the fall. And on holidays, while everyone is getting a vacation to decompress and battle burn out, I was working.
  • complexmango 11y ago
    Had to work 30 hrs a week? So did I. But I look at that as a major advantage. The experience I acquired as well as the 'adulting' life skills gave me an incredible headstart over my peers, who think I was 'born lucky' to have those skills.