Is success tied to having rich parents?

I'm dirt poor. I have been for at least a decade and was homeless for nearly six years of that.

I also have nearly six years of college and my mother's mother came from a low level noble family. They sold the title when they fell on hard times so I'm not nobility, though I finally realized in recent years the conservative "dress code" I was raised with sounds like what I've read about the rules the British royals are expected to follow.

Currently, my failure to make ends meet gets blamed on me and any complaints I make about my gender being a barrier to effective networking, etc, get routinely handwaved off dismissively like I must just be doing something wrong.

I imagine if I ever get successful, people will rewrite their perception of me and focus on the privileges I've been fortunate to have.

No one is a monolith. We all have both good things and bad things in our lives.

It's useful to get some idea of how it was really done as a means to help you figure out how to find a path forward. Money per se is never the whole story.

Plenty of people from monied backgrounds do not become the next Bill Gates.

I would like to think the human race has finally achieved enough that it's possible for us to provide some basics to everyone so most people have maneuvering room and choice in how they live their life. But trying to talk about that seems to get me branded an SJW or something when similar interests from millionaires gets viewed as philanthropy or something.

There's a huge bias in the minds of most people that filters things in what seems a strongly classist fashion. I have yet to find a way around that.

Joking aside, I don't think it's just about the money or the safety net -- most parents can afford to support their kids for a few years after college. I think the biggest advantage is an understanding for entrepreneurial spirit.

When I started my business (not a startup), my biggest problem was having no role model and having no-one I could have asked for advise. I quickly made more money than my parents, but I still had no idea how expensive everything else would be. When I talked to anyone I knew about my expenses, they were all freaking out how much money I was paying my employees. I was extremely reluctant to pay an accountant (why throw away 1000€ a year when I can do it myself!), or even to hire someone to clean the office. The frugality I learned from my parents is not something that's useful when running a business.

If your parents are "rich", chances are they are entrepreneurs of some kind themselves, and they can mentor you, which is a huge advantage.

a) A good environment to grow up in b) A lot of hard work c) Luck

If you're missing one of them, you need to make it up in the other categories.

This is true. It matters much more who you are than what you bring to the table (unless you're bringing in something spectacular).