correlation yes, but not causation.
Is success tied to having rich parents?
31–40 of 137 posts
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#32This 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.
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#33correlation yes, but not causation
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#34Once 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.
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 custome…
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.
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#35Everyone 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_cow...
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#36This 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 af…
its because appearing humble is a much better PR than saying "yeah I did it, it was easy"
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#37One could argue that Microsoft’s success is based on the IBM connection Mary Maxwell Gates provided to her son.
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#38Absolutely, 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.
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#39Once 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.
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 custome…
If they'd fail, they'd just have to do something else (less fun) to pay the rent. Perhaps moving to a cheaper housing. That's a negative prospect, but much less negative than getting evicted ('not able to afford rent'). And if you got rich parents, you can always live in a room (YOUR (large) room) in their house. Or have them buy you a house. Its a massive difference from the prospect of having to move to a cheaper, less likable neighborhood but neither is going to kill you.
Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?
#40I 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).