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Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

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

#201

Post by aksss »

hogFeast wrote: post #98
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew Bill Gates's family was well to do when he started with his endeavors, but I recently came to know Bill Gates Sr. was a prominent personality from Howard Schultz's account of him. The story goes like this - When Howard was offered Starbucks for US$3.8 million by original founders, he was working to raise funds for that and his current investors went over his back to buy Starbucks. Howard was introduced to Bill…

Gates was also introduced to Warren Buffett through his dad.

Isn’t this a really bad comparison though? Most entrepreneurs own small (I mean small) businesses providing services and employment to a mostly local area. Bill Gates and his dad are not representative of most small business owners, and seem rather immaterial to a conversation about entrepreneur success.

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

#202

Post by monadic3 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #62
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...

I'm not so sure. I think to put a finer point on it, if you grow up in an environment where your family expects you to succeed and be wealthy, where your peers are expected to also succeed and be wealthy it gives you both the training, the knowledge, and drive to succeed. Never mind the means (dosh) to higher education. In the U.S. my parent's were working class, broken home. Neither parents had ever invested, knew a…

> I think to put a finer point on it, if you grow up in an environment where your family expects you to succeed and be wealthy, where your peers are expected to also succeed and be wealthy it gives you both the training, the knowledge, and drive to succeed.

Yea, but more importantly it also gives you easy access to capital.

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

#203

Post by nec4b »

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…

For one Bill Gates there are probably a million of other successful entrepreneurs who likely started poorer than you.

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

#204

Post by aksss »

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.

Why are we only talking about the small percentage of entrepreneurs that become famous? Most are not and never will be, nor is that a requirement for entrepreneur success. That bar is entirely irrelevant to any conversation about how to encourage entrepreneurship.

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

#205

Post by mhh__ »

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…

On top of the basic income idea I also would be perfectly happy to have the government fund little businesses in a similar manner - not a corporate basic income, but the next great business might be in the head of someone working for minimum wage in shop. Give them a few quid, keep an eye on them, see where it goes.

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

#206

Post by sramam »

rchaud wrote: post #38

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…

> 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.

While this seems to be the accepted correlation, by all accounts Bill Gates also brought an extraordinary curiosity and drive to the party.

From what I gather, (adjusted for age) he works just as hard today. Listening to him speak on a topic of current interest to him, gives me a IQ bump (self-perceived and short-lived unfortunately, but that's on me)

I'm no statistician, but I'd be willing wager that the two ratios are about the same:

1. kids with privilege in the 70's: Bill Gates

2. people with the ability to spend billions to further a cause: Bill Gates

Edit: formatting

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

#207

Post by jdoliner »

Paul Graham wrote about what YC looks for in startup founders in 2010 [0]. The first thing he notes is that intelligence wasn't anywhere near as important as they expected it would be. And I think pg had a much better definition of intelligence than "academic achievements and standardized test scores." So I don't think this paper is really making a strong-man case for parent's income being the most important factor in entrepreneurship, they've ignored all 5 aspects that experts like pg think are the actual most important factors and focused on one that he thinks isn't as important as people think it is.

[0] http://paulgraham.com/founders.html

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

#208

Post by mhh__ »

danenania wrote: post #173
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…

It definitely makes a huge difference to have savings if you want to be an entrepreneur. But these days, a decent programmer can save up a year or more of runway and build industry connections just by working for a few years and not spending outlandishly. If the startup doesn't work out, a new cushy job is waiting for you. So yeah, startups are risky and favor the wealthy, but let's not overstate the case. I'm in fav…

Whereabouts? I guess this might be true in the valley but in the UK for example I'd imagine you'd have to live off nowt for years to be able to do that - i.e. salaries are pretty horrific in some industries.

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

#209

Post by willcipriano »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #108
mc32 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soviet style housing is an answer and also not an answer. It would provide housing for people on UBI, but because it’s operating on a thin budget, over time it becomes less desirable. Now, it’s not always the case _if_ you can get the tenants to coöperate and pitch in on basic maintenance and keep anti social behavior at bay ala Singapore, but my feeling is we’re not of the same mindset as Singaporeans.

Any creation of affordable housing contributes to slowing down increasing prices. Many countries do this by putting legal limits against gentrification.

> Any creation of affordable housing contributes to slowing down increasing prices.

As does creation of market rate housing[0], even in the short term.

[0]https://research.upjohn.org/up_policybriefs/13/

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

#210

Post by tsimionescu »

umvi wrote: post #175
La1n wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Counter-intuitively, limitations drive innovations. When your resources are limited, you are forced to innovate. If this was true you'd see people from poor families being more entrepreneurial than those from rich.

Well, as another commented pointed out, there is a difference between innovating and starting companies. So I would argue that you do see more innovation from poor families than rich families. After all, rich families have no need to innovate, they just throw money at problems until they go away. Poor people are financially constrained and have to think outside the box to solve their problems. But you also see more c…

> So I would argue that you do see more innovation from poor families than rich families. After all, rich families have no need to innovate, they just throw money at problems until they go away.

This is not something to argue about, this is something that that we should measure.

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