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Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

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

#71

Post by war1025 »

danilocesar wrote: post #60
war1025 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You know that your dream is actually the standard in every developed nation except the US right?

That's what makes it seem achievable.

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

#72

Post by mamon »

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.

And c) They are more likely to be entrepreneurs themselves, so they have some experience to share.

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

#73

Post by JKCalhoun »

SilasX wrote: post #19
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…

Or all the UBI money would pump up rents to the point that living costs make it infeasible again.

I imagine UBI would be good for landlords.

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

#74

Post by PragmaticPulp »

I've worked with a few university programs that help some students sidestep these issues by wrapping entrepreneurship opportunities inside of their course load. Students use much of their junior and senior year time working on business plans, pitching investors, and trying to get their businesses started. It's a great model for leveling the playing field.

Anecdotally, local entrepreneurship circles are absolutely full of young people from wealthy backgrounds who think they're going to leverage their parents' connections and capital into personal riches.

They almost all fail the same way: They focus too much on quick-flip opportunities and the get-rich-quick schemes. They view entrepreneurship as collecting capital from investors and giving it to contractors to produce a business for them. They don't actually want to grind out years of work to get a business off the ground. They burn out after a year or two.

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

#75

Post by AlwaysRock »

Sure. Even more so a safety net allows for entrepreneurship. My parents are not wealthy but they have always had a large enough home and enough extra income that I knew if I needed to move home and live when them I could comfortability for 3 months or more.

I'm not much of an entrepreneur risk taker anymore but every time I've had to make a difficult risk decision in the past I knew the absolute worst case scenario was that I would end up broke living in my parents basement. It's carpeted so it never seemed that bad.

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

#76

Post by orange_tee »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #63

'If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?' Every now and then an article about research on that topic pops up which attributes success from 'Chance'[1] to 'Personality'[2] and everything in between[3]. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-12-22/if-you... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2015/02/02/if-youre-so...

I think this falls more in the category of "being rich is actually better than being poor", of which there are an equal number of articles that routinely pop on the frontpage.

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

#77

Post by umvi »

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

Would it though? From what I understand EU has way better social safety nets, yet much smaller entrepreneurship rates compared to USA.

Counter-intuitively, limitations drive innovations. When your resources are limited, you are forced to innovate. When you have infinite resources, you tend to waste it. Ever notice that when you have infinite time, you waste it doing nothing, but when your time is extremely constrained, you tend to use it much more effectively? Same thing happens with companies and money. Read: NASA, Texas Instruments developing laser guided bombs, etc.

For example, because TI had such a limited budget for developing laser guided bombs, they couldn't afford a wind tunnel like their defense-contractor competition. So they dropped scale models of bombs into swimming pools and performed mathematical transformations on the measurements. TI's design ended up being far more innovative and outperformed their money-flush competitors[0]

All that said, I think there is some truth to what you say. If healthcare were decoupled from employers, I would be much more likely to leave my current company and start my own since that is one thing holding me back.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paveway

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

#78

Post by JKCalhoun »

danilocesar wrote: post #68
methyl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pay tuition Going to college is not required to become a successful entrepreneur.

While you have a few examples of drop outs (Zuck, gates, etc) the vast majority of those famous entrepreneur went to college. Not a requirement, but increases your chances a lot.

Never mind the 99% (a guess here) of successful people that are not "entrepreneurs" but wealthy, successful.

Unless we are only talking about Bill Gates.

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

#79

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

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 is decoupled from employment in a number of countries, but barriers to entrepreneurship remain high, sometimes even higher than in the United States.

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

#80

Post by JKCalhoun »

xapata wrote: post #53
osullivj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprising to a British reader. Sutton Trust research [1] finds that positions of influence in the UK, and the professions generally, are dominated by the 7% who were privately educated. Conclusion: networks and connections are everything. [1] https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/elitist-britain-201...

The UK is probably worse off for having such an obvious clue that someone is high class. Accents are harder to switch than clothes and a haircut.

Maybe. Growing up in the U.S., my obvious lack of straight teeth (single mother could not afford braces for my sister or me) gave away my pedigree.
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