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While I don't think that entrepreneurs have a "special gene for risk", this article is extremely misleading. It's looking just at the moneyed class of entrepren

While I don't think that entrepreneurs have a "special gene for risk", this article is extremely misleading. It's looking just at the moneyed class of entrepreneurs and declaring that "entrepreneurs come from backgrounds that provide a lot of resources". But there's another, much larger, group of entrepreneurs that don't come from such a background at all. I've had the good fortune to get to know and work with quite a lot of successful entrepreneurs and I'd say about 25% of them came from a "moneyed" background. The rest were just regular people with regular backgrounds who were obsessive about starting businesses.

amundskm 1y ago
I wonder what you consider regular, not because I disagree with you, but because I wonder if the term "moneyed" means something different to you than the author. I am always fascinated by the normal human bias to assume that a single person's experience is that "average" experience. To me "moneyed" in terms of being an entrepreneur would mean that if everything failed catastrophically I would have somewhere to go to have a roof over my head and food to eat while I got back on my feet. My personal bias would lead me to believe that most people have less of a support system then the wonderful people on HN. Most of us have degrees and/or well paying STEM type jobs.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  > I wonder if the term "moneyed" means something different to you than the author. I think the author was using the term to mean people who have enough resources available to them (through family or other support networks) that they don't have to worry too much about survival and have relatively easy access to capital. I think that you and I define it similarly. But most entrepreneurs I've known over the decades have had neither of those advantages. Although, I'm thinking of "entrepreneur" in its basic sense, not in terms of just starting tech businesses, and not in terms of people starting business with the goal of becoming anything like unicorns. > My personal bias would lead me to believe that most people have less of a support system then the wonderful people on HN. I agree completely. The HN crowd is, generally speaking (there are exceptions), a fairly privileged bunch.
  - bradlys 1y ago
    I think you’re taking up semantics at a certain point. Entrepreneurs in our current environment has a much more narrow meaning than auto mechanic who takes over an existing business or starts his own shop after working at another for a decade and building up a client base.
forinti 1y ago
There's actually a third group: many folks in poor countries have no option but to start some sort of business as jobs pay very little. There's a supermarket chain in Uruguay that started from selling vegetables on a street corner. There's this guy near my house that sells electronics at a traffic light. I've been witnessing his business grow and grow and now he has a car full of stuff parked nearby.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  That third group exists in the US, too. They're a large part of who I was thinking of.
lapcat 1y ago
> It's looking just at the moneyed class of entrepreneurs and declaring that "entrepreneurs come from backgrounds that provide a lot of resources". This is incorrect. For example, here's one of the links in the article: "We study a sample of individuals who choose either to be employees or to run their own businesses." "we find that the probability of self-employment depends markedly upon whether the individual ever received an inheritance or gift." https://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf https://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf Also: “If one does not have money in the form of a family with money, the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop quite a bit,” Levine tells Quartz. > I've had the good fortune to get to know and work with quite a lot of successful entrepreneurs But this is survivorship bias. You also need to consider the people who never became entrepreneurs, or who failed as entrepreneurs due to lack of money. Note that my quote above says the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop quite a bit, but it doesn't say the chances drop to zero. So of course the number of non-privileged entrepreneurs will be greater than zero. It's all about the odds. I'm personally an entrepreneur, not wealthy, but currently doing better than the majority of people. It took me 5 years to establish a sustainable business, and I nearly went broke, burning through my entire life savings (now restored). This never would have been possible if I didn't already have a substantial life savings before I quit my job.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  Yes, I read the supporting links but remain unconvinced. My impression is that they're talking about a rather specific kind of entrepreneur and not entrepreneurs in general.
  - lapcat 1y ago
    Well, consider the subtext of the article: "We’re in an era of the cult of the entrepreneur." But it's only the ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs who have a cult following and are worshipped for their "risk taking." Whereas small business owners like me don't have a cult following. I don't make more money than BigCo engineer employees, so nobody really cares about my risk taking. They only care about "risks" that generate massive, ostentatious rewards. The cult wouldn't need deprogramming if there was no cult.
claudiulodro 1y ago
> I'd say about 25% of them came from a "moneyed" background. The rest were just regular people with regular backgrounds who were obsessive about starting businesses. This is a very similar point to the article though -- the moneyed class is much smaller than 25% of the population, so they are disproportionately represented in even your anecdotal sample. To be clear, that doesn't mean that regular people can't make it though!

amundskm 1y ago

I wonder what you consider regular, not because I disagree with you, but because I wonder if the term "moneyed" means something different to you than the author. I am always fascinated by the normal human bias to assume that a single person's experience is that "average" experience. To me "moneyed" in terms of being an entrepreneur would mean that if everything failed catastrophically I would have somewhere to go to have a roof over my head and food to eat while I got back on my feet. My personal bias would lead me to believe that most people have less of a support system then the wonderful people on HN. Most of us have degrees and/or well paying STEM type jobs.

JohnFen 1y ago
> I wonder if the term "moneyed" means something different to you than the author. I think the author was using the term to mean people who have enough resources available to them (through family or other support networks) that they don't have to worry too much about survival and have relatively easy access to capital. I think that you and I define it similarly. But most entrepreneurs I've known over the decades have had neither of those advantages. Although, I'm thinking of "entrepreneur" in its basic sense, not in terms of just starting tech businesses, and not in terms of people starting business with the goal of becoming anything like unicorns. > My personal bias would lead me to believe that most people have less of a support system then the wonderful people on HN. I agree completely. The HN crowd is, generally speaking (there are exceptions), a fairly privileged bunch.
- bradlys 1y ago
  I think you’re taking up semantics at a certain point. Entrepreneurs in our current environment has a much more narrow meaning than auto mechanic who takes over an existing business or starts his own shop after working at another for a decade and building up a client base.

forinti 1y ago

There's actually a third group: many folks in poor countries have no option but to start some sort of business as jobs pay very little. There's a supermarket chain in Uruguay that started from selling vegetables on a street corner. There's this guy near my house that sells electronics at a traffic light. I've been witnessing his business grow and grow and now he has a car full of stuff parked nearby.

JohnFen 1y ago
That third group exists in the US, too. They're a large part of who I was thinking of.

lapcat 1y ago

> It's looking just at the moneyed class of entrepreneurs and declaring that "entrepreneurs come from backgrounds that provide a lot of resources". This is incorrect. For example, here's one of the links in the article: "We study a sample of individuals who choose either to be employees or to run their own businesses." "we find that the probability of self-employment depends markedly upon whether the individual ever received an inheritance or gift." https://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf https://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf Also: “If one does not have money in the form of a family with money, the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop quite a bit,” Levine tells Quartz. > I've had the good fortune to get to know and work with quite a lot of successful entrepreneurs But this is survivorship bias. You also need to consider the people who never became entrepreneurs, or who failed as entrepreneurs due to lack of money. Note that my quote above says the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop quite a bit, but it doesn't say the chances drop to zero. So of course the number of non-privileged entrepreneurs will be greater than zero. It's all about the odds. I'm personally an entrepreneur, not wealthy, but currently doing better than the majority of people. It took me 5 years to establish a sustainable business, and I nearly went broke, burning through my entire life savings (now restored). This never would have been possible if I didn't already have a substantial life savings before I quit my job.

JohnFen 1y ago
Yes, I read the supporting links but remain unconvinced. My impression is that they're talking about a rather specific kind of entrepreneur and not entrepreneurs in general.
- lapcat 1y ago
  Well, consider the subtext of the article: "We’re in an era of the cult of the entrepreneur." But it's only the ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs who have a cult following and are worshipped for their "risk taking." Whereas small business owners like me don't have a cult following. I don't make more money than BigCo engineer employees, so nobody really cares about my risk taking. They only care about "risks" that generate massive, ostentatious rewards. The cult wouldn't need deprogramming if there was no cult.

claudiulodro 1y ago

> I'd say about 25% of them came from a "moneyed" background. The rest were just regular people with regular backgrounds who were obsessive about starting businesses. This is a very similar point to the article though -- the moneyed class is much smaller than 25% of the population, so they are disproportionately represented in even your anecdotal sample. To be clear, that doesn't mean that regular people can't make it though!