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'I stole £30,000 from my mum to make millions'
- benj111 8y agoWhat is it about these business bio's? I can't think of any other format where you could sell, stealing £30k from your Mother as almost a good thing. I get that they want to get 'inside the mind' of successful entrepreneurs, but really I don't expect journalists to be this overtly, sickeningly fawning. Based on his opening business gambit I wouldn't be surprised if this guy is embroiled in some scandal, and currently the BBC is just bigging him up. Edit: Spelling
- notahacker 8y agoStatistically you'd think entrepreneurs who steal money from mum to "make millions" have similar or worse success rates than those who borrow it from VCs who have approved their business plan. That's a lot of unhappy families...
- LandR 8y agoYes, this is just seems like survivorship bias. Not a good way to start a business.
- benj111 8y agoSurvivorship bias is kind of missing the point, you could make that point about a lot a business leaders. My point was more, should we be holding up this person as an example to emulate, as the article seems to be doing?
- maceurt 8y agoSomehow, I don't think this is a good thing to be promoting. How many times do people make risks like this and fail? If I stole a million dollars from a family member and spent it on lottery tickets and won would that make me right? It is also pretty disrespectful to your parent to not even ask them for the money first.
- l_camacho84 8y agoWe reading this kind of news we need to be concerned about survivourship bias. How many people did the same and lost everything? That people don't appear on BBC but they are far more than the success examples. https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
- ububu18 8y agotells a lot about society that people are so proud on beeing an ahole and having success with it.
- vinceguidry 8y agoTells a lot about me that I actually clicked through to the article and skimmed it.
- mbrumlow 8y agoI think whoever you stole the money from might have a strong case of owning the ticket and taking the entire lot. Maybe I am getting old, because I keep seeing articles written glorifying doing bad things. Such as this and sneaking into paid venues -- because "mhy fun" and "stick it to the man" without realizing that people following even the most simple of the rules is what makes any society work.
- tapland 8y agoIt's thrilling content for a lot of us who would never consider doing anything like this. It reads as a story where you want to hear 'what happened next?'. Those who take inspiration from it we need to worry about wether or not the story is written.
- coldtea 8y ago>people following even the most simple of the rules is what makes any society work. And some people breaking those rules is what makes society tolerable.
- 8y ago
- LandR 8y agoI had hosting with fasthosts. I forgot my password at some point and going through the forgotten password flow ended with them emailing me my plaintext password... This was years ago, hopfully they've improved by now!
- justanegg 8y agoso his mum owns the company?
- alex_duf 8y agoThat sounds a lot like the wrong kind of model to follow. Gambling 30K he stole (from his mom!), paying stars to entertain his girlfriend... I wouldn't want to be near that person. Good on him for being successful he might be rich but he sounds morally bankrupt.
- ububu18 8y agoWe live in a world were gamblers dominate. Maybe it has to do with the intrinsic ponzi-logic of debt-money. Nearly nothing else than stealing or gambling at crazy risk or beeing the monopolist by birth in the first place leads to success, society pays the bill.
- AstralStorm 8y agoYou forgot directly doing everyone over with externalities and being unethical corporate or political backstabber.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoThis kid is going to Billy McFarland some people.
- rtkwe 8y agoMan those documentaries were crazy. I could almost have believed he'd just gotten over his head (in a too full of himself but not actively malicious way) until the end where he's pulling the same idiotic ticket scam from Magnesis while he was awaiting trial for Fyre Fest!
- anirudh4444 8y agoWhile on the outset it seems to promote an anti-pattern, it could be taken positively and as good advice to just double down and eat some risk once a good opportunity is spotted. As for the particular web hosting business, I think a lot of companies like this that were bought out in the early phases of the dotcom boom may not have been worth the price. If I had to guess, the acquirer was probably driven by a lack of long term understanding and hype.
- benj111 8y ago"it could be taken positively and as good advice to just double down and eat some risk once a good opportunity is spotted" How? His mum ate the risk, not him. I'd happily double down with your credit card, doesn't make me a visionary though.
- marcodena 8y agoI just comment with "Motherfucker Jones" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuUR0LksFaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuUR0LksFaE
- hnhg 8y agoIf someone told me this story in real life, I'd find it hard to believe. On a major news outlet, it feels like PR fluff based on a huge exaggeration. Yet another founder myth.
- coldtea 8y agoPeople still money off of their parents like every day. It's so unbelievable that someone did it to start a business?
- mprev 8y agoI used to work for Andrew and, although the story of the £30k wasn't common knowledge as such, we all knew the fact that he (and his friend Alex) started the company while at school and then Andrew made a great success of it. The parties were real; I went to a few of them.
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- mattbee 8y agoSo... he ordered a T1/T3 line? In 1997? That would have had a lead time of weeks? Surely his rich mother (with a 5-figure credit card limit) chose to fund her son's business, rather than disputing a ridiculous charge & kicking the little bastard into next week. I too co-founded my last business with £30,000, but - funny story - we just asked our family & friends and they lent it to us. OK, not a funny story, but it's the only story. If everyone who wanted to start a business in the UK could've accessed £30,000 the UK would be a lot better off right now :/
- zimpenfish 8y ago> All of the web-hosting companies in the UK at the time were pitched at much bigger companies Not true - I was working at one in 1996 (predating Fasthosts) that was explicitly pitching at individuals and small businesses. IIRC, Claranet was also doing the same at about the same time (late 1996).
- mixmastamyk 8y agoAnd what happened? Was it successful?
- zimpenfish 8y agoMildly? It got sold for GBP10M in 1999 but I had been out of it for about a year by that point (and I didn't have any equity anyway.)
- AstralStorm 8y agoInsert Chav/Good Guy meme pic here, you can replace the whole article with it.
- kurtisc 8y agoOut of interest, what kind of income/credit history do you need for a(t least a) £30k credit limit?
- GordonS 8y agoIt was much easier to get large credit facilities in those days, or indeed prior to the financial crisis (which was really a credit/debt crisis). Round about the same time, my father had a credit limit of around £50k, across 3 different cards. He was a contractor earning around £100k/year, and given he was terrible with managing money, likely didn't have a great credit history. Now in 2019 I earn around £100-150k a year, and my credit limit across 2 cards is £10k, with an immaculate credit history. I'm sure my card providers would increase it if I asked, but certainly not to £50k or even £30k.
- jacquesm 8y agoIt doesn't matter how much money you made. This is not much less stupid than the people that ran a gas station in Northern Ontario that I financed. They stole the till money (100's of thousands) to go gambling in the casino with the intention to put back the original money they stole once they had won. Of course it did not work out that way. Gas station bankrupt, everybody out of a job. If one of my kids stole 30K from me I'd be more than happy to report them, wondering along the line where I'd failed in bringing them up to think that this would be an ok thing to do. Even if they would make millions. I wrote about this here: https://jacquesmattheij.com/stick-to-what-you-know-a-tale-of-an-investment-gone-wrong/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/stick-to-what-you-know-a-tale-of...
- ahoy 8y agoSee, you too can make it big as long as your parents can float you 30 grand!
- vinceguidry 8y agoYeah, not certain why this article is relevant enough for the HN front page.
- coldtea 8y ago30 grand is not that difficult to come for a middle class person [1]. Someone working a normal job with some sacrifices could save those money in like 5 years. Heck, people spend as much on cars. In fact, if you're so certain you will "make it big", take a 30 grand loan. Still, few if any of them create a 50 million dollar business (or even an 1 million dollar one). So there's that. You think the only thing between you and "making it big" is 30 grand? (1) (well, what americans call middle class, not what the British bizarrely call middle class, which means upper class very rich just no royalty)
- whack 8y agoMaybe the guy can be chided for being stupid or for gambling. But for being morally bankrupt? I'm not sure about that one. Here's a hypothetical: suppose you wake up tomorrow as a teenager in 1997, and have the ability to invest $30,000 in Google. Of course, you don't have the money for it, and your parents refuse to believe you. Would you steal it from your parents anyway, knowing that once you've made your money back, they will be taken care of? I would do it in a heartbeat.
- GordonS 8y agoThing is, as a teenager you're way more likely to take risks than when you're older, probably because you don't perceive the probability and consequences in the same way. So whether you can describe this as "morally bankrupt" really needs to be taken in the context of his age at the time.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jscholes 8y ago£30,000 in unexpected credit card debt is the sort of story which ends with somebody committing suicide. But sure it's okay in this case because he did well. If the business had failed, which one could argue was the most likely outcome for a couple of teenagers hosting websites from their bedroom, the headline could read very differently.