27 ms·

Is success tied to having rich parents?

84 points by doppp 5y ago

refurb 5y ago
Start with basics. What’s rich? Parents who let you live in the basement rent free? Because that’s a huge leg up yet something most middle class can offer.
cybarDOTlive 5y ago
It seems silly trying to compare yourself to Musk or any other top dog. A lot of people are content just mastering their own little corner, providing for a family, contributing to their communities. That's success, a startup just gives you more control on what corner and what communities you want to be involved in.
jasfi 5y ago
It raises your chance of success quite a bit. However there are other ways of raising your chance of success. I'm working on something to help founders of all backgrounds: https://cxo.industries https://cxo.industries
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I hope this works. Do you have rich parents?
tedivm 5y ago
Obviously- it's much easier to start a company when you have a safety net to catch you. That does not mean that mean only rich people can start companies, but it does mean it's a lot easier for them.
rvz 5y ago
It's basically a rigged game from the start - Including YC. It's also quite ridiculous to compare yourself to those people. It's symptoms of survivorship bias all over again.
jklinger410 5y ago
All risk is not equal, all reward is not equal. Some people can't afford the startup process.
skywritergr 5y ago
Once you don't have to worry about not having to pay rent, not having to pay electricity etc then your appetite for risks grows. To get to that point you either need to start from a rich household (parents) or get to a certain age, have some money to support you (from previous work) and then go into entrepreneurial experiments. This is a big reason why you see older entrepreneurs embarking into that journey.
- onion2k 5y ago
  your appetite for risks grows Your need for success diminishes with wealth though. A lot of founders struggle to motivate themselves to push through the hard stuff, get over the pits of depression, and to drive themselves following mistakes and rejections if they have resources to fall back on. It's a lot easier to take a month off and book a nice vacation after you've been told "no" by an investor or a major customer than it is to keep going and fire up your IDE or pick up the phone to chase another sale. Many of the founders I've met work crazy hard because they won't be able to pay the rent if they don't. They literally don't have a choice except to succeed. That's a hell of a motivator that wealthy people will never have.
  - p1esk 5y ago
    They literally don't have a choice except to succeed Most founders I know can easily find a normal 9-5 job if they wanted to.
    - BobbyJo 5y ago
      As a poor kid who recently failed to get a startup off the ground, I'll second this. It may have been hard to pay rent, but I knew I could have a 200k base salary whenever I needed to give up. "Getting by" is just not something a reasonably talented engineer in the U.S. ever has to worry about, no matter their background. Other motivators are required.
      - s5300 5y ago
        > "Getting by" is just not something a reasonably talented engineer in the U.S. ever has to worry about, no matter their background. Yes it is. Injuries & medical care/accessibility/costs can fuck you harder than you could ever imagine. Even when you may have been previously making mid-deep into 6 figures.
lazypenguin 5y ago
Rich parents means you eat better, have access to higher quality resources, have more time for fitness, more time to go to the doctor for preventative issues. Rich parents means you don’t have to work two jobs or work while studying. Means you have free “consulting” on life decisions from the perspective of the upper class. Means you access to new things like computers, phones, cars, etc. It’s a huge advantage to come from a successful family. It means you don’t have to spend the majority of your time in survival mode but can instead invest in growth opportunities. I would say there’s an enormous advantage coming from a rich family but it’s not the only requirement.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Successful is not the same as rich though if it's run for a few generations it likely will be. The difference is important.
- Entwickler 5y ago
  I would agree with a lot of this. On the flip side, there's the sayings "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times." and "Wealth does not last beyond three generations". I've anecdotally seen this where kids from rich parents take a lot of their wealth for granted and don't understand fully what it takes to build-up and retain wealth for the long-term. They usually get high-end jobs in society - CFO of company a dad started, doctor, lawyer, etc however it feels some depth to that wealth may have been lost...
  - fellowniusmonk 5y ago
    Wealth doesn't last beyond three generations? Wasn't that debunked? Outside of external cataclysm or far bell curve "bad luck" I don't think most born into wealth (defined lets say as the investor class that commands "decent" capital holdings) pass poverty on to their kids.
  - abhaynayar 5y ago
    I've always had a gripe with the "Hard times..." saying, because in reality, hard times just crush people. The few people that survive hard times are of course exceptionally strong or lucky, but they are exceptions. I can say through my personal experience since I've worked in Switzerland and India: Just because India is having a harder time, doesn't mean we are stronger people, quite the contrary. I don't think good times are anywhere near for India and I don't think hard times are anywhere near for Switzerland. (Switch Switzerland with any developed country.)
Day1 5y ago
Yes, because rich people already know that getting rich is not about being rich.
Wiseacre 5y ago
Pointing out things like privilege tends to be seen as a sore loser mentality, regardless of truth. Sore losers have no place in hustle culture.
- deleted 5y ago
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- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  > Sore losers have no place in hustle culture. "Hustle culture" is what happens when "pulling your bootstraps" is not edgy enough.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    No, it is a set of behaviors and understanding that all successful business owners and self-employed people have, regardless if they are rich or not.
strikelaserclaw 5y ago
I would say at the very minimum, you need to have middle class parents who don't need your support after you get out of college and hopefully no school debt. It is certainly much much easier to focus all your energy on your product, when you don't need to worry about bills.
tiffanyh 5y ago
It's a huge advantage for sure but not required. Much like two startups in the same industry where one of them has raised 10x the money vs the other. Having money: - gives you more chances to pivot - more time to find product/market fit - more time to not need to get a "normal" job just to pay your bills
aqme28 5y ago
I'll echo the comment that every startup founder I've worked under has come from extremely wealthy parents.
WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
Yeah, a lot of things in life are easier if you have safety nets. Creating a startup is a lot more difficult if you have to pay for your own insurance which is why a lot of new creators that aren't super rich run a sidegig while fully employed before eventually jettisoning from their regular jobs.
m0llusk 5y ago
Money opens doors, but wealthy living also tends to teach bad habits that limit ambition and grit. Also, in that thread it was asserted that Steve Jobs did not have rich parents, but they were reasonably well off and lived in a leafy and pleasant neighborhood with excellent schools.
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  I would describe Steve Jobs as coming from a middle class background, but this was in boom time America, where middle class meant a relatively privileged upbringing.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    The San Jose metro area has had the highest probability of economic mobility from being poor to being rich. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-place-where-the-poor-once-thrived/470667/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-pla...
- iso1631 5y ago
  > The location of the Los Altos home meant that Jobs would be able to attend nearby Homestead High School, which had strong ties to Silicon Valley > When he was 13 in 1968, Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard) after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project Well that's a benefit the vast majority don't get.
manuelabeledo 5y ago
I don't think anybody can ignore that having parents with money, not even necessarily rich, is a big factor here. And that's also the reason why most successful entrepreneurs rise to new wealth in rich countries. It's just easier to get money where money is.
jokoon 5y ago
I went through a six months entrepreneurship class in France, targeted for low income people. I learned about marketing, pitching my projects, but my views on business got much worse. The result is mostly make believe and "just do it" mindset. We were taught by several coaches, who helped us making us feel good. But in the end, Bourdieu is just right about everything.
jp57 5y ago
Years and years (and years) ago I was considering starting my own business. An entrepreneurship book I read started (quite rightly) with a chapter on "Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur?" It mentioned that having (implicitly successful) entrepreneur parents was a predictor of successful entrepreneurship. It's a leap from "successful entrepreneur" to "rich", but not a huge leap. In the cited examples, I don't know how the parents made their money, but it's not hard to see how being raised by entrepreneurs could confer advantages beyond a safety net and possible seed investment from parents. In particular, a child from an entrepreneur household would very likely simply be more comfortable and at ease in that environment and have base level of domain knowledge that others lack. This doesn't mean that nobody else can be successful, of course, they just have more to learn.
fallingfrog 5y ago
I think one thing I want to point out is that acknowledging that being a startup founder is only a path available, practically speaking, to the already privileged is not about just wanting to complain, or about jealousy, or about wanting to freeload on someone else's work, or any of the other things that defenders of modern day capitalism will bring up as strawman defenses of the current system. What this is about is changing things so that everybody else has the same chance that currently only a tiny minority do. Because as much as our current economic system is much better than anything that came before, it still wastes the vast majority of the talent and potential of its members. “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” -Steven Jay Gould
jasonkester 5y ago
If you’re looking for an excuse to not start a business, you can’t get better than this. The game is rigged. Thus you would be a fool to try. Problem solved. If, however, you kinda like the idea of running your own business, it’s worth knowing that you do not in fact need rich parents or any of the other prerequisites that non-entrepreneurs think are required. Ask around here and you’ll find plenty of us. (And, of course, if you’re looking, I’m sure you’ll also be able to disqualify all of us individually based on some form of invented privilege).
- 71a54xd 5y ago
  I think the bigger numbers game is guessing when you'll be both experienced enough and risk tolerant enough to make the leap. At 23 I sure as hell didn't know enough to start a company, led alone code a product end to end. At 27 sure I know a lot more, but the idea of steady income is pretty freaking great - reaching a point where "more money" ever month is sort of a diminishing return. Tbh, I think the people with the most leverage are either just a) really smart, b) started programming when they were 14 or c) have incredible social / networking ability. This is based on my set of friends in college I worked with.
  - jasonkester 5y ago
    For me, it was having that first $10k in the bank. That, combined with knowing I could pick up another dev gig quickly if needed, was my safety net, used in lieu of inherited wealth or whatever else. But you’re right, it takes a few years to get to that point. I was happy ditching work for a year at a time to travel by my late 20s, but I didn’t commit to relying on the product stuff to live on until most of the way through my 30s. It seems a lot easier to pull off today, in a world with google/Facebook total comp packages for those first few learning years while building up the net.
    - 71a54xd 5y ago
      Agreed, I'm a solidly above average engineer. However, even as interview loops have been easier I still worry that for my age / YOE I'd be leaving valuable money on the table to go and try to start a business that at best would break even. Thinking about a 2-3 month interview loop is pretty dreadful. At some level I'd need quite a bit of confidence in my idea and more than decent seed funding to leave my job. Basically, being very honest about how good I think I am vs what I could actually deliver. As I get older, playing the "beg rich people for money game" is getting less and less appealing. Of course, many would describe this as just working or "wage c*cking" but IMO the latter is far more degenerate since by feeling you can only drive value by starting something you inevitably become more of a slave and create worse odds to a) enjoying life or b) being reasonably financially stable
whoomp12342 5y ago
correlation yes, but not causation.
jccalhoun 5y ago
This is the thing that drives me crazy. The true rags to riches stories are incredibly rare. In the USA we love the stories about the person that came from nothing and the self-made millionaire but in the vast majority of cases if you look at the person's history you will see they grew up in at least an upper middle class family. This applies to a lot of actors and musicians as well. After all, most of us couldn't afford to be a struggling artist for years without some financial support. Yes, there are exceptions but those are exactly that: exceptions.
- whoomp12342 5y ago
  its because appearing humble is a much better PR than saying "yeah I did it, it was easy"
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    And also because the public likes the idea of themselves moving up the socioeconomic ladder (“temporarily embarassed deca-millionaires”). I think a lot of the political strife in the recent past is due to the increasing inability to ignore how unlikely and how unrealistic this goal is for many.
- klik99 5y ago
  What's frustrating is that it used to be more common in the US in mid-20th century, after the break up of large companies 100 years ago, but is now regressing back to what's been the norm for almost all human civilization.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  For something that is "incredibly rare", I sure seem to know an enormous number of people that managed to bootstrap their way out of real poverty and into real wealth. At least a dozen. It isn't that exceptional, you are overfitting on having heard of them; the vast, vast majority are never going to be written about nor advertise the fact. In many contexts, it is beneficial to pretend like you had an upper-middle class upbringing, so people learn to wear that facade well. When I see assertions like the above made, it makes me think that it is an assumption made by people that haven't actually spent much time living among the lower economic classes.
whoomp12342 5y ago
correlation yes, but not causation
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Everyone give me some counterpoints to this for inspiration. People that came from abject poverty and made it. As an aside I do feel strongly that moving up more than one social class is difficult due to not being taught about money and how to handle it. My parents are working class, their parents were poverty level and never taught them anything about money. When I try to teach my parents about money it seems like there is a glass ceiling above their heads, they can’t understand finer details of how to make that final leap to wealthy by agreesively saving and investing and playing taxes correctly. I hope to make that final leap. I don’t remember most of the millionaires in The Millionaire Next Door coming from wealthy parents, in fact they were mostly working class people that owned a business and were careful with their money. Wealth is actually destroyed after a few generations because subsequent generations never have to learn how to save and not be frivolous. In my own case you would think my grandparents came from a long line of poverty but this is not the case researching my genealogy. On my Dad’s side they had one of the first two story houses in our part of the state and owned hundreds of acres of land. The progenitor had his grave robbed because people thought he was buried with gold. It had to be covered later by large slabs of rock by the Masons, of which he was a member. But this wealth was lost by gambling and drinking in subsequent generations. The big two story house no longer stands and I don’t know if anyone living even knows where it was. There is a famous green text someone sent me once and it is about trying to move up two social classes and how hard it is. I try to live like Tyrone. https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/q05okt/anons_coworker_is_very_frugal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/q05okt/anons_cow...
- xtracto 5y ago
  There's a saying in Mexico: 'rich granddad, millionaire father, miserable son'. Meqning that as families take money for granted, they dont learn what's needed to generate it.
laserbrain 5y ago
One could argue that Microsoft’s success is based on the IBM connection Mary Maxwell Gates provided to her son.
fellowniusmonk 5y ago
Absolutely, as an orphan with many different ideas and no safety net I was frequently put in places where I should have been a co-founder since I was technical and the idea was mine, but basically until I was 29 I had no leverage because I had to have income (and health insurance, I was born with a couple heart defects.) I eventually co-founded a company with two others and it went well, but after exiting I am still not plugged into VC. Basically I'm in the top %1 of earnings in my poverty stricken cohort, a proven pragmatists and a programmer, and I still find it impossible to find and get in front of investors. They don't want cockroach people in my estimation. Being poor with 0 safety net, even when you escape it, you still have the drag. So once again I'm bootstrapping and I'll make progress at a 3rd the rate (or lower) than I could be AND have more risk/exposure than I want.
- RamblingCTO 5y ago
  > I still find it impossible to find and get in front of investors Any ideas why?
  - fellowniusmonk 5y ago
    My startup that was successful was bootstrapped by us founders, so it just seems like a lack of network, I apply through different programs but I think a more personal touch seems neccessary if "friends and family" rounds are not possible.
    - RamblingCTO 5y ago
      I see, thanks!
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >They don't want cockroach people in my estimation. This is true. It matters much more who you are than what you bring to the table (unless you're bringing in something spectacular).
  - 5y ago
RamblingCTO 5y ago
I beg to differ. Coming from a lower middle class background I got a lot of grit and hunger. I studied computer science, being the first at uni in my family. I always hustled part time while studying. Afterwards, I joined a startup and later co-founded another one. All without any support from my parents or anyone else. My actions ultimately put me on a path of success, not anyone else. Although I understand that this situation might look wildly different in the USA. That might be a case for a social security net that actually works (and the MSc. compsci also helps).
- staticassertion 5y ago
  Not being in the USA seems really important. For one thing, insurance is tied to employment in the US, so if you're taking time to work on a company that's a lot of money you're going to have to pay every month if you want healthcare.
  - RamblingCTO 5y ago
    Agree, thanks, that was my point!
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  If I say on Average Americans are taller than Chinese and you say "What about Yao Ming??" That doesn't disprove what I just said. Anecdotes aren't all that valuable/
  - RamblingCTO 5y ago
    Well, I'm in the German startup scence for over 7 years now. I haven't met a lot of founders that fit your image, so I'd say it's anecdotal evidence as well. It might be true for the USA, but it's not in Germany in my experience.
timmg 5y ago
All things being equal, obviously, having money makes things easier. That doesn't mean that children born to rich parents can all be successful entrepreneurs. And it doesn't mean you need rich parents to be successful. But even aside from money, rich parents are likely to know more about business and can teach you. And if you believe intelligence is (at least partly) inherited, it's easy to argue that smart parents are both: more likely to be rich and more likely to have smart kids.
deleted 5y ago
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DoreenMichele 5y ago
I don't say it very often but I'm going to say it again now: I'm dirt poor. I have been for at least a decade and was homeless for nearly six years of that. I also have nearly six years of college and my mother's mother came from a low level noble family. They sold the title when they fell on hard times so I'm not nobility, though I finally realized in recent years the conservative "dress code" I was raised with sounds like what I've read about the rules the British royals are expected to follow. Currently, my failure to make ends meet gets blamed on me and any complaints I make about my gender being a barrier to effective networking, etc, get routinely handwaved off dismissively like I must just be doing something wrong. I imagine if I ever get successful, people will rewrite their perception of me and focus on the privileges I've been fortunate to have. No one is a monolith. We all have both good things and bad things in our lives. It's useful to get some idea of how it was really done as a means to help you figure out how to find a path forward. Money per se is never the whole story. Plenty of people from monied backgrounds do not become the next Bill Gates. I would like to think the human race has finally achieved enough that it's possible for us to provide some basics to everyone so most people have maneuvering room and choice in how they live their life. But trying to talk about that seems to get me branded an SJW or something when similar interests from millionaires gets viewed as philanthropy or something. There's a huge bias in the minds of most people that filters things in what seems a strongly classist fashion. I have yet to find a way around that.
anm89 5y ago
Are we seriously debating whether having access to more money helps you in business? Via proxy by reddit post none the less. Yes, some people in the world have access to opportunities that others don't. Not all 8 billion people on the planet have the exact same set of circumstances. This isn't controversial or even interesting.
newaccount74 5y ago
I don't have rich parents and I'm not a successful startup founder. I guess this confirms it! Joking aside, I don't think it's just about the money or the safety net -- most parents can afford to support their kids for a few years after college. I think the biggest advantage is an understanding for entrepreneurial spirit. When I started my business (not a startup), my biggest problem was having no role model and having no-one I could have asked for advise. I quickly made more money than my parents, but I still had no idea how expensive everything else would be. When I talked to anyone I knew about my expenses, they were all freaking out how much money I was paying my employees. I was extremely reluctant to pay an accountant (why throw away 1000€ a year when I can do it myself!), or even to hire someone to clean the office. The frugality I learned from my parents is not something that's useful when running a business. If your parents are "rich", chances are they are entrepreneurs of some kind themselves, and they can mentor you, which is a huge advantage.
- deleted 5y ago
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- notacoward 5y ago
  > most parents can afford to support their kids for a few years after college Are you sure about that? And even if it's true for most, how many exceptions are you willing to allow before you'll consider that lack of a safety net is a real limitation? > If your parents are "rich", chances are they are entrepreneurs of some kind themselves That statement also seems "lightly supported" to put it mildly. What about doctors, lawyers, MBAs, people who inherited, people who had seven-figure years at a MAGMA, etc.? In fact, let's focus on that last one. It's well known that Microsoft has created thousands of millionaires. A mere handful were entrepreneurs. Most were regular employees who drew generous regular paychecks and also had some stock/options. A minority even of those took much risk working for Microsoft before it was already a big company. Ditto Google/Alphabet, ditto Amazon, ditto Facebook/Meta. They're all minting hundreds of new millionaires every month, and none of those are entrepreneurs. I think your sample might be a bit skewed.
seibelj 5y ago
Rags to riches is often a multi-generational project. This is why family is so important - while it's possible to succeed wildly from nothing, the guidance, financial resources, connections, etc. from your family makes things so much easier. I don't see anything wrong with this - the family is a core institution and I nourish, develop, and protect mine accordingly.
sksksk 5y ago
I often think to be succesful, you need a combination of a) A good environment to grow up in b) A lot of hard work c) Luck If you're missing one of them, you need to make it up in the other categories.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  I agree with you, but even a lot of smart people prefer one-dimensional, binary worldview. (a) is actually a subset of (c), no?
santa_boy 5y ago
On this topic, NNT's ideas deserve a mention. Success is mostly about antifragility and exposing yourself to asymmetric opportunities (at any scale and in the individual's frame of reference). Without a doubt, having rich parents magnifies ability to take such exposure and pretty early in life. So in essence, success IS tied to having rich parents when applied to a typical large population.
klik99 5y ago
I think the focus on the ultra-rich misses the point a bit. My family had enough money that I have a safety net - I know if I royally messed up I'd still have a roof over my head. I think once I borrowed $6k from my dad and paid it back in a year. You don't need to be jealous of the super rich, "small $1m loan from my dad" folks, just knowing someones got your back vastly improves your ability to take on risk. To be more explicit - a lot of these comments are complaining that they aren't born super rich, but it's not about capital, it's about ability to take on risk.
xtracto 5y ago
It's a funny scene us discussing if having rich parents take you places... in an internet forum of people that earn 70k+ a year. I wonder what poor people in countries in India, Mexico or Brazil would think.
- Jeema101 5y ago
  It is indeed about perspective. But many people who live in Western, industrialized countries have never been to a developing country, so they have no basis for comparison except what they see around them. Even my modest apartment, which is completely mundane by Western standards, would be rather luxurious by developing world standards. It's very easy to lose sight of that sometimes.
exabyte 5y ago
It depends on what your metric of success is. More money, individual happines, altruism? Sure, rich parents will give someone a safety net, but I bet in most cases it yields the kids pissing in the wind. Are they creating something they actually enjoy doing while earning a comfortable living? That's an intersection that takes a lot of work beyond just having money to find. I would argue that the real success of a startup is in its potential to grow 'organically' rather than just throwing money inefficiently at it to try and force its success. There's a lot of competition, ideas and people carelessly throwing around money out there regardless, so I think it's a niche that requires much more than money alone to discover. More money is obviously preferred if you do find it though!
joeman1000 5y ago
Why is this a surprise? It’s easier to be successful when you’re taught by successful people (your parents). Not to mention other aspects, but I think this one is important. It is common knowledge that people that just come into money are likely to blow it. If they are taught well by the parents, and then have money, they’re more likely to be successful.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  There's an incredibly large cohort of people that discount or deny their privilege, to the point they laughably claim people can become successful if only they worked hard. They're so out of touch with reality that it helps to post reminders like this from time to time.
  - massinstall 5y ago
    This. Seconded.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    "Privilege" has negative connotations and people do not want to be labeled privileged for that reason. There were times when people tried to hide being gay, having Jewish ancestors or being atheist not because they were out of touch with their own reality, but because they knew that telling the truth would make them socially dirtier. Aside from a few celebrities, "privilege" is looked down on in contemporary discourse.
Apreche 5y ago
100%. I remember in the 2000s I went to a small gathering where a successful (at the time) start-up founder was speaking. Since it was so small I was able to ask real questions. What I asked was effectively "I'd like to do a startup also, but if I fail, I'll have a high risk of being homeless, and failure seems to be the most likely scenario. How do you mitigate that risk?" In so many hums and haws he admitted he got money from his family. Looked it up, his dad was mega rich. That's defined my perspective of the entire "start-up" world ever since.
999900000999 5y ago
I'd say the more important part is a baseline of stability. I went through two evictions by the time I was 19, and I ultimately had to estrange myself from my family to avoid getting evicted for a third time. I'm very happy with my current level of success. I've made 6 figures for a good amount of time and have more than enough saved to take a long vacation. I can't stress enough how important it is to cut out toxic people. Hell a big part of why I left LA is just how lame folks are. The typical personal I went out with in LA was around 30 , and simply didn't want to work. Bad things happen when your around people like this. The moment I moved to Chicago, I was dating a beautiful, amazing career- driven girl. More than worth moving for. If you date someone who doesn't want to work your life will be very very hard. I've met a good amount of people from privileged backgrounds ( for me this means you've never been evicted) who squandered their privilege. For ever rich kid that started a million dollar company, another 2 sat around all day doing nothing. These tend to be the most entitled people on earth. If you work at the local pet store cleaning up animal droppings I have way more respect for you then if you live off a trust fund. Keep in mind alot of lifestyle gurus fit the trust fund kid stereotype. Mark Manson comes to mind, because of family wealth he's never had to work. Then he made millions writing a book about not needing to worry about anything.
- notacoward 5y ago
  > I'd say the more important part is a baseline of stability. Hear, hear. I'm pretty sure I've seen studies that show the initial situation most likely to yield later success is the upper-middle class. Rich enough to have some resources and the stability you mention, but not so rich that "the pressure's off" and one is tempted to just rest on parents' laurels. I think stability is also part of the argument for UBI (or similar). The burdens and instability associated with poverty are drags on the whole economy. Free people from those, and they're better able to contribute back to the economy as both producers and consumers. Unfortunately, too many people would rather limit their own prosperity as long as they can limit someone else's even more, either because they don't understand how the system works or due to a nasty quirk of human nature.
  - 999900000999 5y ago
yashg 5y ago
Yes
casralad 5y ago
Early investors almost always require a friends and family round.
notacoward 5y ago
Yes, and the most insidious part is that the beneficiaries don't even realize it. Often they genuinely do have talent and work hard, and they didn't get a million dollars dropped on them with no strings attached, so they attribute 99% of their success to personal merit. The free housing and transportation, the extra formal and informal instruction, the contacts, the superior nutrition and health care, the freedom from distraction and psychological safety of working with a net - none of those things penetrate their consciousness at all because those weren't blatant easily-counted gifts. They don't realize others don't have those things (all their peers did) or how much that matters. "I still would have succeeded without those" even though it's not true. It's the nature of privilege to hide itself. The correlation is not absolute, of course. There are poor kids who succeed - like me, though even with beginnings that were modest by most standards I was still far luckier than many. There are rich kids who fail. But the relationship is still far stronger than would be allowed in anything we could legitimately call a meritocracy.
aiyen 5y ago
I think it depends on how you measure success. Success doesn’t mean Elon Musk level for everyone. I grew up poor, not even middle class, my parents didn’t have a good education and making 50K after working for 10 years felt like success. Growing up poor definitely held me back. I had to catch up financially, had zero safety net, zero money management skills, and all the other problems of being poor in the US like transportation, access to good education and healthcare, access to opportunities, etc.
antisthenes 5y ago
Not directly, but obviously rich parents = safety net. And safety net means you get to make more rolls of the dice for success. If there is a 20% chance of success, obviously if you roll the dice enough times, you will be successful.
pabe 5y ago
Yes. Look at "elite" universities like Harvard etc. - you basically pay a fortune to get in there and get access to the social network. And that network is what really makes the difference. Also, successful founders often try long enough so that luck finally strikes them. Without money, that's hard to do. Read more here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55277918-super-founders https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55277918-super-founders
SyzygistSix 5y ago
What I have seen is that kids whose parents own their own business or are entrepreneurial have a very different set of influences when growing up compared to kids whose parents were employees. It's not just the most wealthy that get this. And kids whose parents and larger social circle are more bohemian or worldly have the same advantage in that they learn that there are more opportunities that one just doesn't see of your parents and relatives were all employees in middle America. The internet has helped somewhat but as an example, the idea that one can just make their own movies and go to film school wasn't even on my radar growing up in the 80s.
WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
I think about this regularly. Being poor is more than not having material wealth. Apple's Steve Jobs had a period of time where he had no money. But he was never poor. He had no money by choice. He knew what to do to live a comfortable life any time he wanted. But there are people that will always be poor no matter how hard they try. They just don't know how to get ahead. I think that is due to what they learned from their family. A successful family is able to teach their members how to be successful in life even if money is never exchanged. Having the right family that can teach how to be successful even if it's just by example is a great advantage.
inglor_cz 5y ago
This is one huge "correlation vs. causation" question. It also depends what you mean by "success". 15th century Florence had a huge concentration of artistic talents. Was it a rich city? Undoubtedly so, poor places have more pressing concerns than paying people to produce art. But there have been many richer cities since then and their art output is mediocre. Even Florence itself forgot, over time, how to attract or produce great artists. The world isn't static. 200 years ago, almost everyone in the world except a few nobles was poor or at least poor-ish. This is no longer true; so, at the very least, the total wealth can grow beyond what the parents had.

84 points by doppp 5y ago

Start with basics. What’s rich? Parents who let you live in the basement rent free? Because that’s a huge leg up yet something most middle class can offer.

cybarDOTlive 5y ago

It seems silly trying to compare yourself to Musk or any other top dog. A lot of people are content just mastering their own little corner, providing for a family, contributing to their communities. That's success, a startup just gives you more control on what corner and what communities you want to be involved in.

jasfi 5y ago

It raises your chance of success quite a bit. However there are other ways of raising your chance of success. I'm working on something to help founders of all backgrounds: https://cxo.industries https://cxo.industries

spywaregorilla 5y ago
I hope this works. Do you have rich parents?

tedivm 5y ago

Obviously- it's much easier to start a company when you have a safety net to catch you. That does not mean that mean only rich people can start companies, but it does mean it's a lot easier for them.

rvz 5y ago

It's basically a rigged game from the start - Including YC. It's also quite ridiculous to compare yourself to those people. It's symptoms of survivorship bias all over again.

jklinger410 5y ago

All risk is not equal, all reward is not equal. Some people can't afford the startup process.

skywritergr 5y ago

Once you don't have to worry about not having to pay rent, not having to pay electricity etc then your appetite for risks grows. To get to that point you either need to start from a rich household (parents) or get to a certain age, have some money to support you (from previous work) and then go into entrepreneurial experiments. This is a big reason why you see older entrepreneurs embarking into that journey.

onion2k 5y ago
your appetite for risks grows Your need for success diminishes with wealth though. A lot of founders struggle to motivate themselves to push through the hard stuff, get over the pits of depression, and to drive themselves following mistakes and rejections if they have resources to fall back on. It's a lot easier to take a month off and book a nice vacation after you've been told "no" by an investor or a major customer than it is to keep going and fire up your IDE or pick up the phone to chase another sale. Many of the founders I've met work crazy hard because they won't be able to pay the rent if they don't. They literally don't have a choice except to succeed. That's a hell of a motivator that wealthy people will never have.
- p1esk 5y ago
  They literally don't have a choice except to succeed Most founders I know can easily find a normal 9-5 job if they wanted to.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    As a poor kid who recently failed to get a startup off the ground, I'll second this. It may have been hard to pay rent, but I knew I could have a 200k base salary whenever I needed to give up. "Getting by" is just not something a reasonably talented engineer in the U.S. ever has to worry about, no matter their background. Other motivators are required.
    - s5300 5y ago
      > "Getting by" is just not something a reasonably talented engineer in the U.S. ever has to worry about, no matter their background. Yes it is. Injuries & medical care/accessibility/costs can fuck you harder than you could ever imagine. Even when you may have been previously making mid-deep into 6 figures.

lazypenguin 5y ago

Rich parents means you eat better, have access to higher quality resources, have more time for fitness, more time to go to the doctor for preventative issues. Rich parents means you don’t have to work two jobs or work while studying. Means you have free “consulting” on life decisions from the perspective of the upper class. Means you access to new things like computers, phones, cars, etc. It’s a huge advantage to come from a successful family. It means you don’t have to spend the majority of your time in survival mode but can instead invest in growth opportunities. I would say there’s an enormous advantage coming from a rich family but it’s not the only requirement.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Successful is not the same as rich though if it's run for a few generations it likely will be. The difference is important.
Entwickler 5y ago
I would agree with a lot of this. On the flip side, there's the sayings "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times." and "Wealth does not last beyond three generations". I've anecdotally seen this where kids from rich parents take a lot of their wealth for granted and don't understand fully what it takes to build-up and retain wealth for the long-term. They usually get high-end jobs in society - CFO of company a dad started, doctor, lawyer, etc however it feels some depth to that wealth may have been lost...
- fellowniusmonk 5y ago
  Wealth doesn't last beyond three generations? Wasn't that debunked? Outside of external cataclysm or far bell curve "bad luck" I don't think most born into wealth (defined lets say as the investor class that commands "decent" capital holdings) pass poverty on to their kids.
- abhaynayar 5y ago
  I've always had a gripe with the "Hard times..." saying, because in reality, hard times just crush people. The few people that survive hard times are of course exceptionally strong or lucky, but they are exceptions. I can say through my personal experience since I've worked in Switzerland and India: Just because India is having a harder time, doesn't mean we are stronger people, quite the contrary. I don't think good times are anywhere near for India and I don't think hard times are anywhere near for Switzerland. (Switch Switzerland with any developed country.)

Day1 5y ago

Yes, because rich people already know that getting rich is not about being rich.

Wiseacre 5y ago

Pointing out things like privilege tends to be seen as a sore loser mentality, regardless of truth. Sore losers have no place in hustle culture.

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manuelabeledo 5y ago
> Sore losers have no place in hustle culture. "Hustle culture" is what happens when "pulling your bootstraps" is not edgy enough.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  No, it is a set of behaviors and understanding that all successful business owners and self-employed people have, regardless if they are rich or not.

strikelaserclaw 5y ago

I would say at the very minimum, you need to have middle class parents who don't need your support after you get out of college and hopefully no school debt. It is certainly much much easier to focus all your energy on your product, when you don't need to worry about bills.

tiffanyh 5y ago

It's a huge advantage for sure but not required. Much like two startups in the same industry where one of them has raised 10x the money vs the other. Having money: - gives you more chances to pivot - more time to find product/market fit - more time to not need to get a "normal" job just to pay your bills

aqme28 5y ago

I'll echo the comment that every startup founder I've worked under has come from extremely wealthy parents.

WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago

Yeah, a lot of things in life are easier if you have safety nets. Creating a startup is a lot more difficult if you have to pay for your own insurance which is why a lot of new creators that aren't super rich run a sidegig while fully employed before eventually jettisoning from their regular jobs.

m0llusk 5y ago

Money opens doors, but wealthy living also tends to teach bad habits that limit ambition and grit. Also, in that thread it was asserted that Steve Jobs did not have rich parents, but they were reasonably well off and lived in a leafy and pleasant neighborhood with excellent schools.

strikelaserclaw 5y ago
I would describe Steve Jobs as coming from a middle class background, but this was in boom time America, where middle class meant a relatively privileged upbringing.
- sjg007 5y ago
  The San Jose metro area has had the highest probability of economic mobility from being poor to being rich. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-place-where-the-poor-once-thrived/470667/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-pla...
iso1631 5y ago
> The location of the Los Altos home meant that Jobs would be able to attend nearby Homestead High School, which had strong ties to Silicon Valley > When he was 13 in 1968, Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard) after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project Well that's a benefit the vast majority don't get.

manuelabeledo 5y ago

I don't think anybody can ignore that having parents with money, not even necessarily rich, is a big factor here. And that's also the reason why most successful entrepreneurs rise to new wealth in rich countries. It's just easier to get money where money is.

jokoon 5y ago

I went through a six months entrepreneurship class in France, targeted for low income people. I learned about marketing, pitching my projects, but my views on business got much worse. The result is mostly make believe and "just do it" mindset. We were taught by several coaches, who helped us making us feel good. But in the end, Bourdieu is just right about everything.

jp57 5y ago

Years and years (and years) ago I was considering starting my own business. An entrepreneurship book I read started (quite rightly) with a chapter on "Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur?" It mentioned that having (implicitly successful) entrepreneur parents was a predictor of successful entrepreneurship. It's a leap from "successful entrepreneur" to "rich", but not a huge leap. In the cited examples, I don't know how the parents made their money, but it's not hard to see how being raised by entrepreneurs could confer advantages beyond a safety net and possible seed investment from parents. In particular, a child from an entrepreneur household would very likely simply be more comfortable and at ease in that environment and have base level of domain knowledge that others lack. This doesn't mean that nobody else can be successful, of course, they just have more to learn.

fallingfrog 5y ago

I think one thing I want to point out is that acknowledging that being a startup founder is only a path available, practically speaking, to the already privileged is not about just wanting to complain, or about jealousy, or about wanting to freeload on someone else's work, or any of the other things that defenders of modern day capitalism will bring up as strawman defenses of the current system. What this is about is changing things so that everybody else has the same chance that currently only a tiny minority do. Because as much as our current economic system is much better than anything that came before, it still wastes the vast majority of the talent and potential of its members. “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” -Steven Jay Gould

jasonkester 5y ago

If you’re looking for an excuse to not start a business, you can’t get better than this. The game is rigged. Thus you would be a fool to try. Problem solved. If, however, you kinda like the idea of running your own business, it’s worth knowing that you do not in fact need rich parents or any of the other prerequisites that non-entrepreneurs think are required. Ask around here and you’ll find plenty of us. (And, of course, if you’re looking, I’m sure you’ll also be able to disqualify all of us individually based on some form of invented privilege).

71a54xd 5y ago
I think the bigger numbers game is guessing when you'll be both experienced enough and risk tolerant enough to make the leap. At 23 I sure as hell didn't know enough to start a company, led alone code a product end to end. At 27 sure I know a lot more, but the idea of steady income is pretty freaking great - reaching a point where "more money" ever month is sort of a diminishing return. Tbh, I think the people with the most leverage are either just a) really smart, b) started programming when they were 14 or c) have incredible social / networking ability. This is based on my set of friends in college I worked with.
- jasonkester 5y ago
  For me, it was having that first $10k in the bank. That, combined with knowing I could pick up another dev gig quickly if needed, was my safety net, used in lieu of inherited wealth or whatever else. But you’re right, it takes a few years to get to that point. I was happy ditching work for a year at a time to travel by my late 20s, but I didn’t commit to relying on the product stuff to live on until most of the way through my 30s. It seems a lot easier to pull off today, in a world with google/Facebook total comp packages for those first few learning years while building up the net.
  - 71a54xd 5y ago
    Agreed, I'm a solidly above average engineer. However, even as interview loops have been easier I still worry that for my age / YOE I'd be leaving valuable money on the table to go and try to start a business that at best would break even. Thinking about a 2-3 month interview loop is pretty dreadful. At some level I'd need quite a bit of confidence in my idea and more than decent seed funding to leave my job. Basically, being very honest about how good I think I am vs what I could actually deliver. As I get older, playing the "beg rich people for money game" is getting less and less appealing. Of course, many would describe this as just working or "wage c*cking" but IMO the latter is far more degenerate since by feeling you can only drive value by starting something you inevitably become more of a slave and create worse odds to a) enjoying life or b) being reasonably financially stable

whoomp12342 5y ago

correlation yes, but not causation.

jccalhoun 5y ago

This is the thing that drives me crazy. The true rags to riches stories are incredibly rare. In the USA we love the stories about the person that came from nothing and the self-made millionaire but in the vast majority of cases if you look at the person's history you will see they grew up in at least an upper middle class family. This applies to a lot of actors and musicians as well. After all, most of us couldn't afford to be a struggling artist for years without some financial support. Yes, there are exceptions but those are exactly that: exceptions.

whoomp12342 5y ago
its because appearing humble is a much better PR than saying "yeah I did it, it was easy"
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  And also because the public likes the idea of themselves moving up the socioeconomic ladder (“temporarily embarassed deca-millionaires”). I think a lot of the political strife in the recent past is due to the increasing inability to ignore how unlikely and how unrealistic this goal is for many.
klik99 5y ago
What's frustrating is that it used to be more common in the US in mid-20th century, after the break up of large companies 100 years ago, but is now regressing back to what's been the norm for almost all human civilization.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
For something that is "incredibly rare", I sure seem to know an enormous number of people that managed to bootstrap their way out of real poverty and into real wealth. At least a dozen. It isn't that exceptional, you are overfitting on having heard of them; the vast, vast majority are never going to be written about nor advertise the fact. In many contexts, it is beneficial to pretend like you had an upper-middle class upbringing, so people learn to wear that facade well. When I see assertions like the above made, it makes me think that it is an assumption made by people that haven't actually spent much time living among the lower economic classes.

whoomp12342 5y ago

correlation yes, but not causation

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

Everyone give me some counterpoints to this for inspiration. People that came from abject poverty and made it. As an aside I do feel strongly that moving up more than one social class is difficult due to not being taught about money and how to handle it. My parents are working class, their parents were poverty level and never taught them anything about money. When I try to teach my parents about money it seems like there is a glass ceiling above their heads, they can’t understand finer details of how to make that final leap to wealthy by agreesively saving and investing and playing taxes correctly. I hope to make that final leap. I don’t remember most of the millionaires in The Millionaire Next Door coming from wealthy parents, in fact they were mostly working class people that owned a business and were careful with their money. Wealth is actually destroyed after a few generations because subsequent generations never have to learn how to save and not be frivolous. In my own case you would think my grandparents came from a long line of poverty but this is not the case researching my genealogy. On my Dad’s side they had one of the first two story houses in our part of the state and owned hundreds of acres of land. The progenitor had his grave robbed because people thought he was buried with gold. It had to be covered later by large slabs of rock by the Masons, of which he was a member. But this wealth was lost by gambling and drinking in subsequent generations. The big two story house no longer stands and I don’t know if anyone living even knows where it was. There is a famous green text someone sent me once and it is about trying to move up two social classes and how hard it is. I try to live like Tyrone. https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/q05okt/anons_coworker_is_very_frugal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/q05okt/anons_cow...

xtracto 5y ago
There's a saying in Mexico: 'rich granddad, millionaire father, miserable son'. Meqning that as families take money for granted, they dont learn what's needed to generate it.

laserbrain 5y ago

One could argue that Microsoft’s success is based on the IBM connection Mary Maxwell Gates provided to her son.

fellowniusmonk 5y ago

Absolutely, as an orphan with many different ideas and no safety net I was frequently put in places where I should have been a co-founder since I was technical and the idea was mine, but basically until I was 29 I had no leverage because I had to have income (and health insurance, I was born with a couple heart defects.) I eventually co-founded a company with two others and it went well, but after exiting I am still not plugged into VC. Basically I'm in the top %1 of earnings in my poverty stricken cohort, a proven pragmatists and a programmer, and I still find it impossible to find and get in front of investors. They don't want cockroach people in my estimation. Being poor with 0 safety net, even when you escape it, you still have the drag. So once again I'm bootstrapping and I'll make progress at a 3rd the rate (or lower) than I could be AND have more risk/exposure than I want.

RamblingCTO 5y ago
> I still find it impossible to find and get in front of investors Any ideas why?
- fellowniusmonk 5y ago
  My startup that was successful was bootstrapped by us founders, so it just seems like a lack of network, I apply through different programs but I think a more personal touch seems neccessary if "friends and family" rounds are not possible.
  - RamblingCTO 5y ago
    I see, thanks!
moralestapia 5y ago
>They don't want cockroach people in my estimation. This is true. It matters much more who you are than what you bring to the table (unless you're bringing in something spectacular).
- 5y ago

RamblingCTO 5y ago

I beg to differ. Coming from a lower middle class background I got a lot of grit and hunger. I studied computer science, being the first at uni in my family. I always hustled part time while studying. Afterwards, I joined a startup and later co-founded another one. All without any support from my parents or anyone else. My actions ultimately put me on a path of success, not anyone else. Although I understand that this situation might look wildly different in the USA. That might be a case for a social security net that actually works (and the MSc. compsci also helps).

staticassertion 5y ago
Not being in the USA seems really important. For one thing, insurance is tied to employment in the US, so if you're taking time to work on a company that's a lot of money you're going to have to pay every month if you want healthcare.
- RamblingCTO 5y ago
  Agree, thanks, that was my point!
adamsmith143 5y ago
If I say on Average Americans are taller than Chinese and you say "What about Yao Ming??" That doesn't disprove what I just said. Anecdotes aren't all that valuable/
- RamblingCTO 5y ago
  Well, I'm in the German startup scence for over 7 years now. I haven't met a lot of founders that fit your image, so I'd say it's anecdotal evidence as well. It might be true for the USA, but it's not in Germany in my experience.

timmg 5y ago

All things being equal, obviously, having money makes things easier. That doesn't mean that children born to rich parents can all be successful entrepreneurs. And it doesn't mean you need rich parents to be successful. But even aside from money, rich parents are likely to know more about business and can teach you. And if you believe intelligence is (at least partly) inherited, it's easy to argue that smart parents are both: more likely to be rich and more likely to have smart kids.

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DoreenMichele 5y ago

I don't say it very often but I'm going to say it again now: I'm dirt poor. I have been for at least a decade and was homeless for nearly six years of that. I also have nearly six years of college and my mother's mother came from a low level noble family. They sold the title when they fell on hard times so I'm not nobility, though I finally realized in recent years the conservative "dress code" I was raised with sounds like what I've read about the rules the British royals are expected to follow. Currently, my failure to make ends meet gets blamed on me and any complaints I make about my gender being a barrier to effective networking, etc, get routinely handwaved off dismissively like I must just be doing something wrong. I imagine if I ever get successful, people will rewrite their perception of me and focus on the privileges I've been fortunate to have. No one is a monolith. We all have both good things and bad things in our lives. It's useful to get some idea of how it was really done as a means to help you figure out how to find a path forward. Money per se is never the whole story. Plenty of people from monied backgrounds do not become the next Bill Gates. I would like to think the human race has finally achieved enough that it's possible for us to provide some basics to everyone so most people have maneuvering room and choice in how they live their life. But trying to talk about that seems to get me branded an SJW or something when similar interests from millionaires gets viewed as philanthropy or something. There's a huge bias in the minds of most people that filters things in what seems a strongly classist fashion. I have yet to find a way around that.

anm89 5y ago

Are we seriously debating whether having access to more money helps you in business? Via proxy by reddit post none the less. Yes, some people in the world have access to opportunities that others don't. Not all 8 billion people on the planet have the exact same set of circumstances. This isn't controversial or even interesting.

newaccount74 5y ago

I don't have rich parents and I'm not a successful startup founder. I guess this confirms it! Joking aside, I don't think it's just about the money or the safety net -- most parents can afford to support their kids for a few years after college. I think the biggest advantage is an understanding for entrepreneurial spirit. When I started my business (not a startup), my biggest problem was having no role model and having no-one I could have asked for advise. I quickly made more money than my parents, but I still had no idea how expensive everything else would be. When I talked to anyone I knew about my expenses, they were all freaking out how much money I was paying my employees. I was extremely reluctant to pay an accountant (why throw away 1000€ a year when I can do it myself!), or even to hire someone to clean the office. The frugality I learned from my parents is not something that's useful when running a business. If your parents are "rich", chances are they are entrepreneurs of some kind themselves, and they can mentor you, which is a huge advantage.

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notacoward 5y ago
> most parents can afford to support their kids for a few years after college Are you sure about that? And even if it's true for most, how many exceptions are you willing to allow before you'll consider that lack of a safety net is a real limitation? > If your parents are "rich", chances are they are entrepreneurs of some kind themselves That statement also seems "lightly supported" to put it mildly. What about doctors, lawyers, MBAs, people who inherited, people who had seven-figure years at a MAGMA, etc.? In fact, let's focus on that last one. It's well known that Microsoft has created thousands of millionaires. A mere handful were entrepreneurs. Most were regular employees who drew generous regular paychecks and also had some stock/options. A minority even of those took much risk working for Microsoft before it was already a big company. Ditto Google/Alphabet, ditto Amazon, ditto Facebook/Meta. They're all minting hundreds of new millionaires every month, and none of those are entrepreneurs. I think your sample might be a bit skewed.

seibelj 5y ago

Rags to riches is often a multi-generational project. This is why family is so important - while it's possible to succeed wildly from nothing, the guidance, financial resources, connections, etc. from your family makes things so much easier. I don't see anything wrong with this - the family is a core institution and I nourish, develop, and protect mine accordingly.

sksksk 5y ago

I often think to be succesful, you need a combination of a) A good environment to grow up in b) A lot of hard work c) Luck If you're missing one of them, you need to make it up in the other categories.

inglor_cz 5y ago
I agree with you, but even a lot of smart people prefer one-dimensional, binary worldview. (a) is actually a subset of (c), no?

santa_boy 5y ago

On this topic, NNT's ideas deserve a mention. Success is mostly about antifragility and exposing yourself to asymmetric opportunities (at any scale and in the individual's frame of reference). Without a doubt, having rich parents magnifies ability to take such exposure and pretty early in life. So in essence, success IS tied to having rich parents when applied to a typical large population.

klik99 5y ago

I think the focus on the ultra-rich misses the point a bit. My family had enough money that I have a safety net - I know if I royally messed up I'd still have a roof over my head. I think once I borrowed $6k from my dad and paid it back in a year. You don't need to be jealous of the super rich, "small $1m loan from my dad" folks, just knowing someones got your back vastly improves your ability to take on risk. To be more explicit - a lot of these comments are complaining that they aren't born super rich, but it's not about capital, it's about ability to take on risk.

xtracto 5y ago

It's a funny scene us discussing if having rich parents take you places... in an internet forum of people that earn 70k+ a year. I wonder what poor people in countries in India, Mexico or Brazil would think.

Jeema101 5y ago
It is indeed about perspective. But many people who live in Western, industrialized countries have never been to a developing country, so they have no basis for comparison except what they see around them. Even my modest apartment, which is completely mundane by Western standards, would be rather luxurious by developing world standards. It's very easy to lose sight of that sometimes.

exabyte 5y ago

It depends on what your metric of success is. More money, individual happines, altruism? Sure, rich parents will give someone a safety net, but I bet in most cases it yields the kids pissing in the wind. Are they creating something they actually enjoy doing while earning a comfortable living? That's an intersection that takes a lot of work beyond just having money to find. I would argue that the real success of a startup is in its potential to grow 'organically' rather than just throwing money inefficiently at it to try and force its success. There's a lot of competition, ideas and people carelessly throwing around money out there regardless, so I think it's a niche that requires much more than money alone to discover. More money is obviously preferred if you do find it though!

joeman1000 5y ago

Why is this a surprise? It’s easier to be successful when you’re taught by successful people (your parents). Not to mention other aspects, but I think this one is important. It is common knowledge that people that just come into money are likely to blow it. If they are taught well by the parents, and then have money, they’re more likely to be successful.

notreallyserio 5y ago
There's an incredibly large cohort of people that discount or deny their privilege, to the point they laughably claim people can become successful if only they worked hard. They're so out of touch with reality that it helps to post reminders like this from time to time.
- massinstall 5y ago
  This. Seconded.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "Privilege" has negative connotations and people do not want to be labeled privileged for that reason. There were times when people tried to hide being gay, having Jewish ancestors or being atheist not because they were out of touch with their own reality, but because they knew that telling the truth would make them socially dirtier. Aside from a few celebrities, "privilege" is looked down on in contemporary discourse.

Apreche 5y ago

100%. I remember in the 2000s I went to a small gathering where a successful (at the time) start-up founder was speaking. Since it was so small I was able to ask real questions. What I asked was effectively "I'd like to do a startup also, but if I fail, I'll have a high risk of being homeless, and failure seems to be the most likely scenario. How do you mitigate that risk?" In so many hums and haws he admitted he got money from his family. Looked it up, his dad was mega rich. That's defined my perspective of the entire "start-up" world ever since.

999900000999 5y ago

I'd say the more important part is a baseline of stability. I went through two evictions by the time I was 19, and I ultimately had to estrange myself from my family to avoid getting evicted for a third time. I'm very happy with my current level of success. I've made 6 figures for a good amount of time and have more than enough saved to take a long vacation. I can't stress enough how important it is to cut out toxic people. Hell a big part of why I left LA is just how lame folks are. The typical personal I went out with in LA was around 30 , and simply didn't want to work. Bad things happen when your around people like this. The moment I moved to Chicago, I was dating a beautiful, amazing career- driven girl. More than worth moving for. If you date someone who doesn't want to work your life will be very very hard. I've met a good amount of people from privileged backgrounds ( for me this means you've never been evicted) who squandered their privilege. For ever rich kid that started a million dollar company, another 2 sat around all day doing nothing. These tend to be the most entitled people on earth. If you work at the local pet store cleaning up animal droppings I have way more respect for you then if you live off a trust fund. Keep in mind alot of lifestyle gurus fit the trust fund kid stereotype. Mark Manson comes to mind, because of family wealth he's never had to work. Then he made millions writing a book about not needing to worry about anything.

notacoward 5y ago
> I'd say the more important part is a baseline of stability. Hear, hear. I'm pretty sure I've seen studies that show the initial situation most likely to yield later success is the upper-middle class. Rich enough to have some resources and the stability you mention, but not so rich that "the pressure's off" and one is tempted to just rest on parents' laurels. I think stability is also part of the argument for UBI (or similar). The burdens and instability associated with poverty are drags on the whole economy. Free people from those, and they're better able to contribute back to the economy as both producers and consumers. Unfortunately, too many people would rather limit their own prosperity as long as they can limit someone else's even more, either because they don't understand how the system works or due to a nasty quirk of human nature.
- 999900000999 5y ago

yashg 5y ago

Yes

casralad 5y ago

Early investors almost always require a friends and family round.

notacoward 5y ago

Yes, and the most insidious part is that the beneficiaries don't even realize it. Often they genuinely do have talent and work hard, and they didn't get a million dollars dropped on them with no strings attached, so they attribute 99% of their success to personal merit. The free housing and transportation, the extra formal and informal instruction, the contacts, the superior nutrition and health care, the freedom from distraction and psychological safety of working with a net - none of those things penetrate their consciousness at all because those weren't blatant easily-counted gifts. They don't realize others don't have those things (all their peers did) or how much that matters. "I still would have succeeded without those" even though it's not true. It's the nature of privilege to hide itself. The correlation is not absolute, of course. There are poor kids who succeed - like me, though even with beginnings that were modest by most standards I was still far luckier than many. There are rich kids who fail. But the relationship is still far stronger than would be allowed in anything we could legitimately call a meritocracy.

aiyen 5y ago

I think it depends on how you measure success. Success doesn’t mean Elon Musk level for everyone. I grew up poor, not even middle class, my parents didn’t have a good education and making 50K after working for 10 years felt like success. Growing up poor definitely held me back. I had to catch up financially, had zero safety net, zero money management skills, and all the other problems of being poor in the US like transportation, access to good education and healthcare, access to opportunities, etc.

antisthenes 5y ago

Not directly, but obviously rich parents = safety net. And safety net means you get to make more rolls of the dice for success. If there is a 20% chance of success, obviously if you roll the dice enough times, you will be successful.

pabe 5y ago

Yes. Look at "elite" universities like Harvard etc. - you basically pay a fortune to get in there and get access to the social network. And that network is what really makes the difference. Also, successful founders often try long enough so that luck finally strikes them. Without money, that's hard to do. Read more here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55277918-super-founders https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55277918-super-founders

SyzygistSix 5y ago

What I have seen is that kids whose parents own their own business or are entrepreneurial have a very different set of influences when growing up compared to kids whose parents were employees. It's not just the most wealthy that get this. And kids whose parents and larger social circle are more bohemian or worldly have the same advantage in that they learn that there are more opportunities that one just doesn't see of your parents and relatives were all employees in middle America. The internet has helped somewhat but as an example, the idea that one can just make their own movies and go to film school wasn't even on my radar growing up in the 80s.

WheelsAtLarge 5y ago

I think about this regularly. Being poor is more than not having material wealth. Apple's Steve Jobs had a period of time where he had no money. But he was never poor. He had no money by choice. He knew what to do to live a comfortable life any time he wanted. But there are people that will always be poor no matter how hard they try. They just don't know how to get ahead. I think that is due to what they learned from their family. A successful family is able to teach their members how to be successful in life even if money is never exchanged. Having the right family that can teach how to be successful even if it's just by example is a great advantage.

inglor_cz 5y ago

This is one huge "correlation vs. causation" question. It also depends what you mean by "success". 15th century Florence had a huge concentration of artistic talents. Was it a rich city? Undoubtedly so, poor places have more pressing concerns than paying people to produce art. But there have been many richer cities since then and their art output is mediocre. Even Florence itself forgot, over time, how to attract or produce great artists. The world isn't static. 200 years ago, almost everyone in the world except a few nobles was poor or at least poor-ish. This is no longer true; so, at the very least, the total wealth can grow beyond what the parents had.