Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
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Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#2You ever try making an assessment like this in regular conversation?
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#3My father-in-law got together with his brother to buy a bulldozer and ran a business putting in curbs and sidewalks.
Today my wife teaches people to ride horses.
Thus she had a precedent in her family of someone who succeeded at self-employment and she wound up doing something similar in work.
John Kenneth Galbraith would say that that sort of self-employed person is highly exploited, etc., that it isn't a realistic vision for many people to get ahead. But I know many people who've succeeded that way. I've known a number of successful academics (like Galbraith), but I met them in grad school or after they were successful.
2000+ years before Marx the greeks talked about "class" as being networks of families that gravitate to towards certain family wells and that is alive and well today.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#4I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better.
Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meetings etc. Always a hot meal on the table when he got home from a big day.
One result of a Basic Income: more folks can be entrepreneurs, if they're willing to live off that few dollars a month. It could make all the difference.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#5I suspect a large part of this is due to the fact that those with wealthy parents are more likely to have a) family money to fall back on if things go wrong and b) family investment in the early days
Everyone else has to seriously consider the (high) risks of their startup failing and not being able to afford rent, or whether their idea is worth burning their life savings.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#6I've been self employed on an off for the last 4.5 years. I spend 4 years working a job I hated (plus all the time building up to that job) to save the money to take a year off and do my own thing.
The first 2 years went amazingly well, I was very lucky. The last 2 have been pretty rough. A combination of government crackdowns (I'm a brit) on self employed people, brexit and now covid has pretty much done for me. I have enough cash for 3 more months.
I wish I could have started 2+ years earlier with a loan from mum or dad. I wish I could continue now with the same. But they're poor. I suspect I will be too if I don't get a job or a major sale soon.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#7Correlation, not Causation
The actual cause is more than likely: parents who have high income set a precedent for self-employment.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#8All my attempts at entrepreneurship have been via moonlighting, and have failed. There just aren't enough hours in the day. But I can't just quit my day job and take my income down to $0 to pursue a startup.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#9Wired covered the "myth of meritocracy" as it pertains to entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley 8 years ago:
https://www.wired.com/2013/11/silicon-valley-isnt-a-meritocr...
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#10I suspect a large part of this is due to the fact that those with wealthy parents are more likely to have a) family money to fall back on if things go wrong and b) family investment in the early days Everyone else has to seriously consider the (high) risks of their startup failing and not being able to afford rent, or whether their idea is worth burning their life savings.
You forgot the family network. Zuckerberg père is a prominent Westchester dentist. Easier to find decent lawyers and accountants when you grow up in that sort of environment. Apparently, Zuckerberg met Sandberg at a party, hosted by a mutual friend.