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Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

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Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#31

Post by germinalphrase »

wegs wrote: post #27
jcadam wrote: post #8

All 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.

My experience as well, until the first time I got funded. After a success under your belt, it's easy to keep going and get more funding. There's no shortage of capital looking for people to fund right now (it goes through spells). The first time I got funded, it was through a rich elite idiot's social connections (CEO). CEO was a sleazeball, and got all the financial and most of the branding benefit of the venture, d…

How are defining ‘financial stability’ here?

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#32

Post by war1025 »

abhiyerra wrote: post #20
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I'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 meeting…

Healthcare and Basic Income would do a lot to encourage entrepreneurship. I had to also wait till I paid off my student loans. There are a whole lot of shackles if you come from a humble background to starting a company full time. On the other hand it has never been cheaper to start a side hustle.

> Healthcare and Basic Income would do a lot to encourage entrepreneurship.

I have a dream that Healthcare will someday be decoupled from employment. So much waste is tolerated simply due to the fact that the majority of the expense is borne by your employer before the number they put on your paycheck.

I can live on a part time salary without issue, but health insurance, which is already $200/wk for my family with my employer chipping in, would jump to more like $600/wk, which is just completely untenable. There is no sane reason why health insurance should be my single largest expense each month.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#33

Post by Scoundreller »

Reminds me of a newspaper writeup on a recentlyish murdered billionaire where the murderer is still on the loose, and one of the sons had a writeup about his alibis. One proof of his whereabouts was an iPhone picture of his crypto seed he took while in another country. Bad opsec, ugh.

The child was running a nothing special b&m chain business, but they had a “loan” from the billionaire to acquire and expand the business.

I’m like, okay, at least a loan has to be paid back.

Then half-way through the article, there’s a shareholder agreement involved and I’m like, it doesn’t even need to be paid back!!!!, ugh.

How is Joe Schmoe supposed to compete in a sector where the competition has that kind of financing?

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#34

Post by theinverseidea »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I'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 meeting…

I cant wait for basic income, because I cant wait to quit my job and focus on my ideas.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#35

Post by jcadam »

wegs wrote: post #27
jcadam wrote: post #8

All 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.

My experience as well, until the first time I got funded. After a success under your belt, it's easy to keep going and get more funding. There's no shortage of capital looking for people to fund right now (it goes through spells). The first time I got funded, it was through a rich elite idiot's social connections (CEO). CEO was a sleazeball, and got all the financial and most of the branding benefit of the venture, d…

Yea, I'm doing well enough in my career to have some disposable income now, and was thinking maybe I should outsource to some freelancers next time I get a new software idea, and just play project manager / salesman.

However, the engineer in me would hate to not be building the thing myself.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#36

Post by nostrademons »

thisisnico wrote: post #29
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI needs to be paired with restricting rent increases or eliminating zoning restrictions that limit housing supply then.

As a landlord, and landlording in an area with restricted rent, it makes zero difference. It's only good if you stay where you rent, but if you move, it's market rent. You can't adequately control market rent because there are so so many variable on what market rent is for every individual unit, location, type, etc. I'm all for the eliminating zoning restrictions though.

That's the case for rent restrictions. It's actually worse - rent control decreases housing mobility (nobody wants to give up a rent-controlled apartment, even if it no longer meets their needs) and disincentivizes development, so the prevailing market rate for non-rent-controlled apartments goes up.

But eliminating zoning restrictions and building more housing actually does work. Then when you move, you have your pick of many apartments to choose from, and nobody has pricing power to charge more.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#37

Post by polote »

the-smug-one wrote: post #26
ksec wrote: post #24

I still remember the tweet [1] PG strongly disagree with that and arguing with Matthew Prince. [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1129897694984646657?s=20

PG should remind himself that statistical outliers exist. A short quip on Twitter does not mean anything when you have quantitative data against you.

People should be reminded that PG is a VC investor and so he wants the most people as possible to create companies

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#38

Post by rchaud »

I've heard a great deal about Bill Gates in my lifetime, but it wasn't until I read Paul Allen's 2011 autobiography that I learned that Bill's mother (a director at a bank) introduced him to IBM chairman John Opel in 1980. They both sat on the board for United Way[0].

It really struck me how these kinds of connections are less of a twist of fate, and more about environment and proximity. Even now it feels remarkable that someone with Gates' intellect and access to rich district school computers (in the '70s) benefited so massively from being born into a connected family.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influe...

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#39

Post by dawsmik »

ksec wrote: post #24

I still remember the tweet [1] PG strongly disagree with that and arguing with Matthew Prince. [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1129897694984646657?s=20

You could still agree with everything in the article and tweet this tweet. The article states the strongest predictor of entrepreneurship is parent's wealth. There are many other predictors.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#40

Post by polote »

elliebike wrote: post #5

I 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.

If you had read the article, you would have seen that it's exactly what they say : “A strong economic base may benefit those interested in setting up a start-up, providing an economic safety net in the event of failure,”
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