Viral Thread Busts The Myth About Famous Billionaires Starting Out “Poor”
Interview With Author
We all love stories about scrappy underdogs who overcome the odds and make it big through relentless hard work, unwavering grit, and sheer force of will. However, the stories about how some of the richest and most powerful people made their millions (and billions) are too romanticized and gloss over some very important details.
That’s the point that Aidan Smith made in a viral Twitter thread where he explained how Jeff Bezos and others had a huge leg-up when it came to helping lay the foundations of their business empires. Namely—having families with lots of money.
Aidan told Bored Panda that the US isn’t the only country where a lot of people believe myths about businessmen while the truth is a Google search away. “It’s far from a U.S.-exclusive phenomenon, but in America, it’s easier for most people to imagine becoming a billionaire themselves than it is to imagine an economic order in which a handful of people own half the world’s wealth. Social mobility from working-class to middle-class is increasingly out of reach and the illusion that one can conceivably amass a net worth of over a billion dollars is a comforting fantasy for many people.” Scroll down for the rest of the interview.
Jon Erlichman posted how Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in his garage, suggesting that he was a self-made billionaire
Image credits: JonErlichman
Image credits: JonErlichman
However, Aidan Smith pointed out that Bezos’ parents invested more than 245k dollars into Amazon to help him out
Image credits: AidanSmith2020
Aidan then went on to explain how other famous billionaires had a lot of help because they had wealthy and powerful family members. Here’s what he said about Bill Gates
Image credits: AidanSmith2020
Image credits: AidanSmith2020
Image credits: AidanSmith2020
This is what Aidan said about Warren Buffett
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Image credits: AidanSmith2020
Mark Zuckerberg might not be who he is today without the expensive tuition he received
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Image credits: AidanSmith2020
Image credits: AidanSmith2020
Image credits: AidanSmith2020
Aidan then talked about the Waltons and the Kochs
Image credits: AidanSmith2020
Not to mention how Kylie Jenner is far from the self-made billionaire some claim her to be
Image credits: AidanSmith2020
The moral of the story is that people shouldn’t beat themselves up for being poor because a lot of very successful people had financial help and support
Aidan told us that he has a decent-sized following and is used to his posts going moderately viral. “But I’m pleasantly surprised by how much of an impact this tweet in particular had.”
According to him, believing that certain famous billionaires are self-made when they might not be is harmful for a variety of reasons. “For one, even in the rare cases in which people from working-class backgrounds amass exorbitant wealth, it’s still not ‘self-made’ given that amassing wealth on that scale will always have come from ruthless exploitation of others.”
While Bezos may have started Amazon in his parents’ garage when he was 30, people tend to focus on this part, not the fact that his parents invested 245,573 dollars in Amazon in 1995, nor that Bezos worked in Wall Street before committing to Amazon.
Bloomberg found that if Bezos’ parents kept all of their holdings in the company, their shares would have been worth around 30 billion dollars in 2018.
As of now, it’s unclear how much of the stock Jackie and Mike Bezos still own. They could secretly be among the world’s wealthiest 30 people (possibly even ahead of Elon Musk at the time).
Bezos and others might be successful, talented, dedicated, and not afraid to take risks (nobody is trying to diminish their accomplishments or effort) but they’re not entirely self-made.
Aidan’s thread definitely got the internet’s attention: it got more than 489k likes, nearly 150k retweets, and started a discussion.
Some people were surprised to learn some of the things that Aidan shared on Twitter. Others fully agreed with his message. Meanwhile, some Twitter users questioned why people are getting upset at people becoming successful, even if they did use their parents’ money. To which some internet users responded that fake underdog stories lead to poor people being told it’s their own fault for not becoming rich.
People had different opinions after reading Aidan’s posts. Some thought that success is success no matter what while others agreed with Aidan’s ideas
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The point seems to have gone over some of the head of those responding. He is not saying that it is not smart to flip a quarter million into a billion, what he is saying is that people who really are "self made", who really came from "nothing"....do not have parents that can afford to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars!! They do not have parents that own homes with large garages to practice tinkering on computers or to house a start up...they do not have the huge leg-up that having access to those things gives you in life. Bezos, Zuckerburg, Warren, Gates....all were upper-middle class at the least...which, in America is worlds away from being lower class....like on an entirely different planet. Pretending they were dirt poor with no help, imo, takes away from the success that they have achieved, albeit with lots of help.
Exactly. And thank you. The people responding that these people may have had help but turned it into billions are missing the point of the story. They weren't born poor, like they like to make it out. And anyone that thinks that having help from wealthy parents isn't what got them there are being obtuse.
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The comments fascinate me. "Of course parents lend their kids money to help them out." Uh... your parents have money to lend? OK, you're right there better off than most!
Some parents won't lend any help even if they can. We were extremely lucky that my husbands dad gave us $50,000 to help us buy a home last year. Without that help we wouldn't have a home of our own today
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No one seems to see the point of this. This is about privilege. People assume if you're poor you don't work hard and if you're rich you must've worked hard and deserved it bc you're so much better than others. Getting help from your parents w large sums of money is not self made. It's not righteous and they're not better than a poor person working a hard job making minimum wage.
The problem is, middle-class Americans think they earned everything themselves, and don't even recognize the help they got from their family as "help." Paying for your daycare & various lessons, paying you to do chores, buying you your own car (or "selling" their car to you for cheap), helping pay for tuition, letting you stay in their house or giving you a no-interest loan when you are short on money, etc. These are all luxuries poor people don't have, but rich people don't think of as luxuries.
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I'm always amused about how poor people feel this uncontrollable urge to defend the rich people that systematically exploit them and keep them poor.
Um, remind me NOT to buy and drink a Goli Soda, if I ever become wealthy enough to go to Bengal.
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I am more concerned in the behaviour of these billionaires now, rather than the provenance of their 'humble beginnings': any parent in the position to help their child/ren succeed by a) giving them money to invest b) being the 'who you know' in networking c) providing money for a top university (or like the celebs who bribed colleges to accept their spawn)or d) WHATEVER would do. It's what they make of themselves as successful adults with a ridiculous amount of personal wealth that matters most.
I too am concerned about the behavior of many of these millionaires. Bezos, in particular. But doesn't it speak to their characters that they lie about their backgrounds? Saying you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps when those bootstraps were made by Ralph Lauren is disingenuous.
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Bill Gates father is an attorney who guided bill through acquisitions and lawsuits defending him against some less than ethical business practices. Oh, his high school owned a $20,000 PDP-11 computer $132,000 in today’s money when mine didn’t have enough chalk.
Not to mention that Bill Gates didn't even wrote the operating system he was hired for to write but bought it from a talented, unfortunately not very business developer for peanuts. Microsoft also didn't come up with the idea for windows. They stole the idea from Apple which stole the idea from Xerox. Remember xerox?
I had a brother that was in on the ground floor of computers. He lived in Seattle at the time Bill Gates wrote the original DOS program, and you had to get it on cassette tapes. He bought it, met Gates, and was completely unimpressed with him. More to his character, and later to his business practices of using his wealth to run over up and coming programmers by suing, or buying them out. And no, it wasn't sour grapes, my brother became a consultant to NASA, so he was fine with his career.
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It's not just money, but also a parent's social connections and networking. If your parent has good connections, you already have a foot in the door. If your parents own or manage a company, you're already hired. Which is sad, because the apple doesn't always fall close to the tree.
Some people are so privileged they are blind to it. If your family can pay for your college, if they bought your first car, if they can help you out as an adult if you need money - you’re privileged. Just because you aren’t a millionaire doesn’t change that reality
This story makes some great points about the myth of capitalism and American success. One thing I want to add is our way of handling healthcare makes it damn near impossible to do what these guys did without having wealthy benefactors to get you through your start up years. Unless you have both contacts in the business world and people wealthy enough to provide you with capital and healthcare, your chances of opening a successful business are slim. I also want to add that even with fastidious savings, the burden of healthcare will prevent most people from ever being able to start a business. And by the time you actually have the experience and contacts to have real chance of opening a business on your own, you have aged to where healthcare is a concern and you may have kids and others that depend on you. The risk of an illness and the responsibility that we have to our spouses and children is why most most of us will never have the chance to open a business of own.
The problem is USA's health system is probably the worst in developed or even middle income countries in terms of preventing people from entering in financial distress. And every business needs money ("capital") in the beginning. Very few business start making money right from the start, not necessarily from wealthy benefactors but also from savings, loans and capital from business partners.
Load More Replies... The biggest step up for Zuckerberg was going to Harvard (even if he didn't graduate). The single best thing about going to an Ivy League College isn't the education, there are many state schools where you can get a great education.... it's the contacts you make there. A former startup CEO was a Harvard guy, he had contacts at the top of most industries and government. Bank dragging its feet on a line of credit? The bank's president was in his fraternity. Having trouble getting a work visa for a new hire? He'll call up the congressman he partied with at sprint break. For pretty much every situation, he had someone to call. He was a very successful CEO, and much of that came from the fact that he could get help for pretty much any business problem - the guy is a VC now, rumored to be worth almost a billion dollars... his parents were run of the mill millionaires.
Mark Zuckerberg's dad is a venture capitalist so it was real easy for FB to get investment money
Ok, but if FB was a bad idea he would have lost everything, like lots of tech companies. Money itself doesn't guarantee the success of a company, there are lots of other factors, in many cases luck is one of them.
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This is important because our society uses these examples against the truest poor, asking why they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Money is often required to beget money. I have to have a little left over to be able to invest it so I can then afford to help my kid get to college or start her business. This doesn't even count the s****y stuff that happens if life: divorce, natural disasters, pandemics, financial crashes, that can put every penny you had at risk.
Or, you could cheat to get into Wharton by paying someone else to take your SATs, have your rich father find a doctor to say you have bone spurs to keep from serving your country, borrow $1,000,000 from said father and manage to lose it in NYC real estate and borrow another $1,000,000, manage to brand 13 companies with your name, reap fees for that and run them all into the ground (including a casino and a pro football team- both of which are almost a license to print money) , declare bankruptcy 4 times so you can skip out on your debts, "write" 2 books that brag about screwing builders by putting off paying them until they finish then finding something to complain about and offering half, threaten Forbes magazine for not listing you as a billionaire while putting off showing proof until the magazines are printed and then using that listing to get Deutsche Bank to you loan you millions (while at the same time filing taxes on a MUCH smaller income).
Then run for an office you are not qualified for and have no understanding of by promising the working class you'll look out for them and then instituting a whole series of policies that have a directly negative impact on those people, and having won place one hand on a book you have never read and raise the other and swearing to uphold the Constitution and then regularly violate it, swear to defend the Nation against all enemies but ignoring when one of those pays our enemies to kill our soldiers.
Load More Replies... I have privilege being from a middle class family. I'm definitely better off then my parents were. They also helped me a lot. They couldn't give half a million dollars though. If they could've done that I would've went to a university instead of community college and had much better connections and would've been able to buy a home or invested. That would've put us into upper middle class. You see how being born into privelege breeds privelge
I hope it goes without saying, this is part of the "systemic racism" we keep hearing about. The US has extremely poor social mobility - rich people tend to get much better education & access to family wealth, without which it's very difficult to succeed in the US. And I'm not just talking about "filthy rich" wealth - simple things like being able to borrow your parents' car, being able to borrow money from parents rather than dropping out of school, etc. make a difference. Black people have only had one or two generations of equal(-ish) opportunity to build up wealth.
If you have ever been to a third world country and witness extreme poverty you will understand why some people join criminal organizations. I'm not excusing the absolute horrific crimes committed by these groups, but if you are in survival mode and the cartel offers you $20,000 a week to transport drugs, I understand.
Donald Trump never claimed to be poor, but he said turned one million into a fortune. In reality he turned $140 million into bankrupt hotels and schools.
Familial connections and wealth can matter, and luck wears many other guises. E.g. Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that he was very lucky that there happened to be a shift in Hollywood in the '80s towards action flicks, right when he, a bodybuilder, was trying to become an actor. But success isn't reducible to luck or reducible to hard work or talent. It's combos of all of that; on NPR's How I Built This podcast, on each episode the host asks the creator of the success story (which the episode was about): 'Is your success from hard work, talent & smarts or just luck?' Mostly they say it's all of those things. Sara Blakely w/ Spanx: lucky that the first factory took a chance to make them, luckier still that Oprah plugged them! But to her credit: others have said they had the same idea, she took the initiative to try to make it a reality. Luck could happen b/c she had acted. Oprah COULD plug them b/c Blakely had manufactured them, had est.'d the business. Blakely also made a lot of good moves during her unlucky, uncertain, treacherous moments along the journey. That's how success stories often go.
Arnold was wealthy. He was born into a wealthy family and had familial connections when he came to the usa
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The problem wasn't Bezos. The problem is Congress removing most regulations to prevent monopolies and corporations blatant buying politicians. This is short-sighted since the more money they stash overseas, the less money our citizens can spend to support their companies. Eventually, they will go broke too. Check out the essays of Richard Hanauer, the only original non-family investor in Amazon. He said you have to regulate corporations because if they do the right thing, investors will vote them out.
The mainstream media is left wing? Oh my ... how does one even get there? It may be less f****d up today, but if you read any newspaper in the late nineties, early 2Ks, it is obvious they were writing in favor of the then-preached neoliberalism, essentially saying that you take away the burdens of paying taxes from companies the state would likely bail-out if they failed, they would flourish - and still, people kept talking about how they took risks and were paying taxes, while none of it is true.
So, it sounds like what a fake rapper would do. You say you from the hood but you're actually a suburbanite?
While somebody had to be the original, therefore genuine, rags to riches story, most started out ahead of the crowd, like the ones in the article. Their manufactured backstories always leave out the part about how much easier it is to hit a home run, like they did, when you get to start out on third base.
It is generational. It usually isn't rags to riches (usually being operative word). More like rags to surviving to thriving to excelling to riches. It takes generations to build wealth, but by maintaining a poor underclass, there is no opportunity to build generational wealth. I'm not explaining this well. My cousin was given a house by her parents when she graduated high school. So she has never had to pay rent or a mortgage. This means she can save and put money away for her son's future. As a result, my cousin's son will be sent to the best schools and have more opportunities.
Load More Replies... love how people are "it was just a small loan" a loan that only wealthy families can provide. They literally are making the point that NONE of these people would have done squat if their parents didn't have a cash to toss around. No one, NOT one person is saying those people weren't smart. It's a simple a to b to c scenario. A- they need the smarts, but MOST importantly, they NEVER would have gotten anywhere without B, mommy and daddy's money. Period. If your parents have 1/4 of a MILLION dollars to give you, you are already getting benefits 99% of the population does not have. And think about that. There are a ton of people in this world at A, and if they had an extra $250,000 dollars at the right point in their life they could be making $125,000 a year instead of $30,000. These are irrefutable facts. This world revolves around money. You can work harder than anyone else, be smarter than everyone else, but if you don't have the money and connections you still get nothing.
This really divides people doesn't it? I just think that people should be presented honestly. If their parents started them off, fair enough - but SAY SO. It's not easy to become fabulously wealthy and honesty about how they have achieved it takes nothing away but does show that it is STILL difficult. As a side note - I worked as a buyer for IBM in the mid 80s (I feel old as dirt saying that lol!) and IBM could make or break companies whether they be small or large. I dealt with publications (getting the hand books printed) and we were the sole/largest customer for some businesses, the loss of our custom could have broke them..
Yet while Oprah gets a lot of recognition, she doesn't get the same recognition as Gates, Bezos or Zuckerburg, yet she truly is a self made billionaire that came from nothing. She had everything against her and yet rose above it all.
Rhianna too right? Didn't she cross the $B threshold?
Load More Replies... No business developed after 1935 is ever self-made. (Yeah, argue with me about the year if you want, but I had to start somewhere.) Most of the infrastructure before 1945 was built as an aspect of getting America back on its feet from the Depression, and that was all tax-funded, even with some loans. Since then, although we decry the decay of our infrastructure, it has built in whole or in part from tax monies, or in more recent times, from larger private enterprises who benefited from earlier public build-up and/or used their tax-neutral status to invest in infrastructure for their own bottom line, and afforded other enterprises to develop and profit along the way. I haven't even begun to discuss the tax-neutral policies that make us a 3rd-world tax-haven, or the anti-labor laws that keep workers from ever improving their socio-economic status as we have been deluded in our historical rhetoric. No profitable private enterprise today ever, truly, has been self-made. -Rev Dr M, retiree
Even not starting in Debt is a huge advantage these days. Imagine what you could do with your money if you didn't have most of it bled to rent. You pay rent to people whose kids benefit from it as they tell you life's fair. I once dated the daughter of a billionaire and we got in an argument once that eventually led to me being told my parents should have worked harder. Not one single person should not be negatively effected by their parents wealth. But unfortunately legalities rule the world, not morals.
I'd like to see a comparison list of actual self-made billionaires that were truly working-class individuals without an advantaged background that built something from the ground up. I know they exist. I just want to see how they compare to the likes of those mentioned.
It's not about judging him for taking a loan (who wouldn't??) For me, as someone who had a poor upbringing, who's always been on their own financially, this is something I learned very early on. "You have to have money to make money." I'm constantly reminded that I'm at a huge disadvantage and will either have to work far harder than those with wealthy parents/family or just settle for less/a mediocre life with extreme stress from not being able make ends meet. It's definitely a "life's not fair" complaint.It's just so hard to not feel incredibly depressed and/or deeply jealous watching those around me be handed things that I only dream of.
Wait. So Jeff Besos invented Amazon while living in the "Wonder Years" house? Wow. (Stock footage becomes funny when you recognize it)
Bloomberg is the real rags to riches story which is why putting him up against Trump would have been awesome, and the fact that he gives billions to environmental groups.
False narrative. They're not recognised for being self made people, they're commented about because they own huge companies that are in everyone's life and that have lots of imperfections. In fact, Microsoft faced several big antitrust processes, Facebook is facing a lot of backlash because of their handling of fake news and hate groups, and Amazon too is being looked at for their business practices. So, saying that these people are admired for being self made is false and their companies' histories show that in many cases the public's perception of them is aleady bad. In the case of Warren he's not followed for being a self made man but for his investment decisions. And by the way, saying that Amazon was founded in a garage is not the same as saying that Bezos is a self-made man.
I mean...I'm from a very privileged background and I couldn't do what those guys have done. I hope I'll be successful one day but I'll probably never reach the success my dad had, and he was a true rags to riches story. Born to an immigrant family of 10 worked his whole life, never had a hand up or a handout, started a successful company, and did well for himself.
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There are ways to make money that do not require your parents or other family members to lend you thousands of dollars. You have the option to always look for the reasons why things WON'T work for you, or you can look for the reasons that they CAN work for you. Don't be afraid to take chances. Don't let the scared people steal your dreams. It's important to step out and fail as many times as it takes to find the means to succeed. And for the love of all things Good, DON'T BE THE A*****E THAT STEALS SOMEONE ELSES DREAM! That is all.
I notice that the argument that smart people tend to have smart children is absent. Smart people tend to make smart decisions that give them access to money. My point being GENETICS !! is a bigger part of this then we like to admit.
Being rich ≠ being smart. If you want a living, breathing example of this, just have a listen at the babblings of the deranged baboon that’s presently throwing his feces around the White House.
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Who said that Bezos or any of these people started off poor? Even that picture of the garage taken at face value shows a very middle class home. The whole starting in the garage thing means starting small, not coming from poverty. Poor people generally don’t have garages. Also, being a self made billionaire means that you didn’t inherit the bulk of your wealth, but rather created a business that got you where you are. It doesn’t mean that you literally never received help from anyone.
Nathan what abouts that you want to reference are the one in a million that aren't born into wealth. Just like playing professional sports and getting wealthy from it. It's a one in a million shot that it will happen.
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I disagree with this article big time. He misses the facts that many of the parents of these future billionaires themselves got their " wealth" from starting off poor or lower middle class and then helped their children to the next level. Almost every family in America could build generational wealth if they had that same mindset.
Also Zuckerberg and Bezos...yes they got a push by their parent, but Mark's Father it's a dentist and Jeff's Father it's not a business man, they did not have the chance to work in the "Family business" they start from scratch with a push... different story like the Winklevoss Twins, they learn from the family business, invest the family money, get supported by family employees etc.. Mark, Buffette and Bezos are Self Made Billionaires!!!!!
You ARE missing the point. Privilege gives you a leg up. Even me, as a white woman, when I would go on job interviews. I almost always got the position, and the POC sitting next to me waiting for their interview did not. These were entry level positions that only required a high school diploma. Did I have a leg up? You betcha.
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It matters because they are held up as paragons of "pulling yourself up from the bootstraps" and held in front of poor individuals faces as " they were poor like you, but they made it...what is your problem"? That is faulty because it presumes that the success what not a result of a well-off upbringing, education, connections and hook-ups...but simply to their "willpower". That "good idea" probably would have not taken off had he not had the money, from his parents, to produce, test, market and implement it. Others, who have equally "good ideas", but not the support and backing wealth can give, never get off the ground. It is "normal" only for those whose parents have money to give....that is the entire point.
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(1) He couldn't get that loan on his own merits, (2) banks charge interest that would have slowed/stopped his growth (frequently "loans" from parents are gifts). This is about the unspinning the meritocracy narrative, by pointing out that they had opportunities that only the rich could use. These aren't "just plain folks". *And* they exploit regions by not paying taxes, thanks for bringing that up. (Also, they exploit and endanger their workforce... but that isn't the issue at hand).
Load More Replies... I don't recall that he was "blaming" anyone. Simply pointing out that you don't get say you've "pulled yourself up by your bootstraps" when it just isn't so. Then call out people who aren't working hard. This isn't about being fair, but stating facts.
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"A quarter of a million dollars is NOT a lot of money" LOL
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The point seems to have gone over some of the head of those responding. He is not saying that it is not smart to flip a quarter million into a billion, what he is saying is that people who really are "self made", who really came from "nothing"....do not have parents that can afford to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars!! They do not have parents that own homes with large garages to practice tinkering on computers or to house a start up...they do not have the huge leg-up that having access to those things gives you in life. Bezos, Zuckerburg, Warren, Gates....all were upper-middle class at the least...which, in America is worlds away from being lower class....like on an entirely different planet. Pretending they were dirt poor with no help, imo, takes away from the success that they have achieved, albeit with lots of help.
Exactly. And thank you. The people responding that these people may have had help but turned it into billions are missing the point of the story. They weren't born poor, like they like to make it out. And anyone that thinks that having help from wealthy parents isn't what got them there are being obtuse.
Load More Replies... The comments fascinate me. "Of course parents lend their kids money to help them out." Uh... your parents have money to lend? OK, you're right there better off than most!
Some parents won't lend any help even if they can. We were extremely lucky that my husbands dad gave us $50,000 to help us buy a home last year. Without that help we wouldn't have a home of our own today
Load More Replies... No one seems to see the point of this. This is about privilege. People assume if you're poor you don't work hard and if you're rich you must've worked hard and deserved it bc you're so much better than others. Getting help from your parents w large sums of money is not self made. It's not righteous and they're not better than a poor person working a hard job making minimum wage.
The problem is, middle-class Americans think they earned everything themselves, and don't even recognize the help they got from their family as "help." Paying for your daycare & various lessons, paying you to do chores, buying you your own car (or "selling" their car to you for cheap), helping pay for tuition, letting you stay in their house or giving you a no-interest loan when you are short on money, etc. These are all luxuries poor people don't have, but rich people don't think of as luxuries.
Load More Replies... I'm always amused about how poor people feel this uncontrollable urge to defend the rich people that systematically exploit them and keep them poor.
Um, remind me NOT to buy and drink a Goli Soda, if I ever become wealthy enough to go to Bengal.
Load More Replies... I am more concerned in the behaviour of these billionaires now, rather than the provenance of their 'humble beginnings': any parent in the position to help their child/ren succeed by a) giving them money to invest b) being the 'who you know' in networking c) providing money for a top university (or like the celebs who bribed colleges to accept their spawn)or d) WHATEVER would do. It's what they make of themselves as successful adults with a ridiculous amount of personal wealth that matters most.
I too am concerned about the behavior of many of these millionaires. Bezos, in particular. But doesn't it speak to their characters that they lie about their backgrounds? Saying you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps when those bootstraps were made by Ralph Lauren is disingenuous.
Load More Replies... Bill Gates father is an attorney who guided bill through acquisitions and lawsuits defending him against some less than ethical business practices. Oh, his high school owned a $20,000 PDP-11 computer $132,000 in today’s money when mine didn’t have enough chalk.
Not to mention that Bill Gates didn't even wrote the operating system he was hired for to write but bought it from a talented, unfortunately not very business developer for peanuts. Microsoft also didn't come up with the idea for windows. They stole the idea from Apple which stole the idea from Xerox. Remember xerox?
I had a brother that was in on the ground floor of computers. He lived in Seattle at the time Bill Gates wrote the original DOS program, and you had to get it on cassette tapes. He bought it, met Gates, and was completely unimpressed with him. More to his character, and later to his business practices of using his wealth to run over up and coming programmers by suing, or buying them out. And no, it wasn't sour grapes, my brother became a consultant to NASA, so he was fine with his career.
Load More Replies... It's not just money, but also a parent's social connections and networking. If your parent has good connections, you already have a foot in the door. If your parents own or manage a company, you're already hired. Which is sad, because the apple doesn't always fall close to the tree.
Some people are so privileged they are blind to it. If your family can pay for your college, if they bought your first car, if they can help you out as an adult if you need money - you’re privileged. Just because you aren’t a millionaire doesn’t change that reality
This story makes some great points about the myth of capitalism and American success. One thing I want to add is our way of handling healthcare makes it damn near impossible to do what these guys did without having wealthy benefactors to get you through your start up years. Unless you have both contacts in the business world and people wealthy enough to provide you with capital and healthcare, your chances of opening a successful business are slim. I also want to add that even with fastidious savings, the burden of healthcare will prevent most people from ever being able to start a business. And by the time you actually have the experience and contacts to have real chance of opening a business on your own, you have aged to where healthcare is a concern and you may have kids and others that depend on you. The risk of an illness and the responsibility that we have to our spouses and children is why most most of us will never have the chance to open a business of own.
The problem is USA's health system is probably the worst in developed or even middle income countries in terms of preventing people from entering in financial distress. And every business needs money ("capital") in the beginning. Very few business start making money right from the start, not necessarily from wealthy benefactors but also from savings, loans and capital from business partners.
Load More Replies... The biggest step up for Zuckerberg was going to Harvard (even if he didn't graduate). The single best thing about going to an Ivy League College isn't the education, there are many state schools where you can get a great education.... it's the contacts you make there. A former startup CEO was a Harvard guy, he had contacts at the top of most industries and government. Bank dragging its feet on a line of credit? The bank's president was in his fraternity. Having trouble getting a work visa for a new hire? He'll call up the congressman he partied with at sprint break. For pretty much every situation, he had someone to call. He was a very successful CEO, and much of that came from the fact that he could get help for pretty much any business problem - the guy is a VC now, rumored to be worth almost a billion dollars... his parents were run of the mill millionaires.
Mark Zuckerberg's dad is a venture capitalist so it was real easy for FB to get investment money
Ok, but if FB was a bad idea he would have lost everything, like lots of tech companies. Money itself doesn't guarantee the success of a company, there are lots of other factors, in many cases luck is one of them.
Load More Replies... This is important because our society uses these examples against the truest poor, asking why they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Money is often required to beget money. I have to have a little left over to be able to invest it so I can then afford to help my kid get to college or start her business. This doesn't even count the s****y stuff that happens if life: divorce, natural disasters, pandemics, financial crashes, that can put every penny you had at risk.
Or, you could cheat to get into Wharton by paying someone else to take your SATs, have your rich father find a doctor to say you have bone spurs to keep from serving your country, borrow $1,000,000 from said father and manage to lose it in NYC real estate and borrow another $1,000,000, manage to brand 13 companies with your name, reap fees for that and run them all into the ground (including a casino and a pro football team- both of which are almost a license to print money) , declare bankruptcy 4 times so you can skip out on your debts, "write" 2 books that brag about screwing builders by putting off paying them until they finish then finding something to complain about and offering half, threaten Forbes magazine for not listing you as a billionaire while putting off showing proof until the magazines are printed and then using that listing to get Deutsche Bank to you loan you millions (while at the same time filing taxes on a MUCH smaller income).
Then run for an office you are not qualified for and have no understanding of by promising the working class you'll look out for them and then instituting a whole series of policies that have a directly negative impact on those people, and having won place one hand on a book you have never read and raise the other and swearing to uphold the Constitution and then regularly violate it, swear to defend the Nation against all enemies but ignoring when one of those pays our enemies to kill our soldiers.
Load More Replies... I have privilege being from a middle class family. I'm definitely better off then my parents were. They also helped me a lot. They couldn't give half a million dollars though. If they could've done that I would've went to a university instead of community college and had much better connections and would've been able to buy a home or invested. That would've put us into upper middle class. You see how being born into privelege breeds privelge
I hope it goes without saying, this is part of the "systemic racism" we keep hearing about. The US has extremely poor social mobility - rich people tend to get much better education & access to family wealth, without which it's very difficult to succeed in the US. And I'm not just talking about "filthy rich" wealth - simple things like being able to borrow your parents' car, being able to borrow money from parents rather than dropping out of school, etc. make a difference. Black people have only had one or two generations of equal(-ish) opportunity to build up wealth.
If you have ever been to a third world country and witness extreme poverty you will understand why some people join criminal organizations. I'm not excusing the absolute horrific crimes committed by these groups, but if you are in survival mode and the cartel offers you $20,000 a week to transport drugs, I understand.
Donald Trump never claimed to be poor, but he said turned one million into a fortune. In reality he turned $140 million into bankrupt hotels and schools.
Familial connections and wealth can matter, and luck wears many other guises. E.g. Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that he was very lucky that there happened to be a shift in Hollywood in the '80s towards action flicks, right when he, a bodybuilder, was trying to become an actor. But success isn't reducible to luck or reducible to hard work or talent. It's combos of all of that; on NPR's How I Built This podcast, on each episode the host asks the creator of the success story (which the episode was about): 'Is your success from hard work, talent & smarts or just luck?' Mostly they say it's all of those things. Sara Blakely w/ Spanx: lucky that the first factory took a chance to make them, luckier still that Oprah plugged them! But to her credit: others have said they had the same idea, she took the initiative to try to make it a reality. Luck could happen b/c she had acted. Oprah COULD plug them b/c Blakely had manufactured them, had est.'d the business. Blakely also made a lot of good moves during her unlucky, uncertain, treacherous moments along the journey. That's how success stories often go.
Arnold was wealthy. He was born into a wealthy family and had familial connections when he came to the usa
Load More Replies... The problem wasn't Bezos. The problem is Congress removing most regulations to prevent monopolies and corporations blatant buying politicians. This is short-sighted since the more money they stash overseas, the less money our citizens can spend to support their companies. Eventually, they will go broke too. Check out the essays of Richard Hanauer, the only original non-family investor in Amazon. He said you have to regulate corporations because if they do the right thing, investors will vote them out.
The mainstream media is left wing? Oh my ... how does one even get there? It may be less f****d up today, but if you read any newspaper in the late nineties, early 2Ks, it is obvious they were writing in favor of the then-preached neoliberalism, essentially saying that you take away the burdens of paying taxes from companies the state would likely bail-out if they failed, they would flourish - and still, people kept talking about how they took risks and were paying taxes, while none of it is true.
So, it sounds like what a fake rapper would do. You say you from the hood but you're actually a suburbanite?
While somebody had to be the original, therefore genuine, rags to riches story, most started out ahead of the crowd, like the ones in the article. Their manufactured backstories always leave out the part about how much easier it is to hit a home run, like they did, when you get to start out on third base.
It is generational. It usually isn't rags to riches (usually being operative word). More like rags to surviving to thriving to excelling to riches. It takes generations to build wealth, but by maintaining a poor underclass, there is no opportunity to build generational wealth. I'm not explaining this well. My cousin was given a house by her parents when she graduated high school. So she has never had to pay rent or a mortgage. This means she can save and put money away for her son's future. As a result, my cousin's son will be sent to the best schools and have more opportunities.
Load More Replies... love how people are "it was just a small loan" a loan that only wealthy families can provide. They literally are making the point that NONE of these people would have done squat if their parents didn't have a cash to toss around. No one, NOT one person is saying those people weren't smart. It's a simple a to b to c scenario. A- they need the smarts, but MOST importantly, they NEVER would have gotten anywhere without B, mommy and daddy's money. Period. If your parents have 1/4 of a MILLION dollars to give you, you are already getting benefits 99% of the population does not have. And think about that. There are a ton of people in this world at A, and if they had an extra $250,000 dollars at the right point in their life they could be making $125,000 a year instead of $30,000. These are irrefutable facts. This world revolves around money. You can work harder than anyone else, be smarter than everyone else, but if you don't have the money and connections you still get nothing.
This really divides people doesn't it? I just think that people should be presented honestly. If their parents started them off, fair enough - but SAY SO. It's not easy to become fabulously wealthy and honesty about how they have achieved it takes nothing away but does show that it is STILL difficult. As a side note - I worked as a buyer for IBM in the mid 80s (I feel old as dirt saying that lol!) and IBM could make or break companies whether they be small or large. I dealt with publications (getting the hand books printed) and we were the sole/largest customer for some businesses, the loss of our custom could have broke them..
Yet while Oprah gets a lot of recognition, she doesn't get the same recognition as Gates, Bezos or Zuckerburg, yet she truly is a self made billionaire that came from nothing. She had everything against her and yet rose above it all.
Rhianna too right? Didn't she cross the $B threshold?
Load More Replies... No business developed after 1935 is ever self-made. (Yeah, argue with me about the year if you want, but I had to start somewhere.) Most of the infrastructure before 1945 was built as an aspect of getting America back on its feet from the Depression, and that was all tax-funded, even with some loans. Since then, although we decry the decay of our infrastructure, it has built in whole or in part from tax monies, or in more recent times, from larger private enterprises who benefited from earlier public build-up and/or used their tax-neutral status to invest in infrastructure for their own bottom line, and afforded other enterprises to develop and profit along the way. I haven't even begun to discuss the tax-neutral policies that make us a 3rd-world tax-haven, or the anti-labor laws that keep workers from ever improving their socio-economic status as we have been deluded in our historical rhetoric. No profitable private enterprise today ever, truly, has been self-made. -Rev Dr M, retiree
Even not starting in Debt is a huge advantage these days. Imagine what you could do with your money if you didn't have most of it bled to rent. You pay rent to people whose kids benefit from it as they tell you life's fair. I once dated the daughter of a billionaire and we got in an argument once that eventually led to me being told my parents should have worked harder. Not one single person should not be negatively effected by their parents wealth. But unfortunately legalities rule the world, not morals.
I'd like to see a comparison list of actual self-made billionaires that were truly working-class individuals without an advantaged background that built something from the ground up. I know they exist. I just want to see how they compare to the likes of those mentioned.
It's not about judging him for taking a loan (who wouldn't??) For me, as someone who had a poor upbringing, who's always been on their own financially, this is something I learned very early on. "You have to have money to make money." I'm constantly reminded that I'm at a huge disadvantage and will either have to work far harder than those with wealthy parents/family or just settle for less/a mediocre life with extreme stress from not being able make ends meet. It's definitely a "life's not fair" complaint.It's just so hard to not feel incredibly depressed and/or deeply jealous watching those around me be handed things that I only dream of.
Wait. So Jeff Besos invented Amazon while living in the "Wonder Years" house? Wow. (Stock footage becomes funny when you recognize it)
Bloomberg is the real rags to riches story which is why putting him up against Trump would have been awesome, and the fact that he gives billions to environmental groups.
False narrative. They're not recognised for being self made people, they're commented about because they own huge companies that are in everyone's life and that have lots of imperfections. In fact, Microsoft faced several big antitrust processes, Facebook is facing a lot of backlash because of their handling of fake news and hate groups, and Amazon too is being looked at for their business practices. So, saying that these people are admired for being self made is false and their companies' histories show that in many cases the public's perception of them is aleady bad. In the case of Warren he's not followed for being a self made man but for his investment decisions. And by the way, saying that Amazon was founded in a garage is not the same as saying that Bezos is a self-made man.
I mean...I'm from a very privileged background and I couldn't do what those guys have done. I hope I'll be successful one day but I'll probably never reach the success my dad had, and he was a true rags to riches story. Born to an immigrant family of 10 worked his whole life, never had a hand up or a handout, started a successful company, and did well for himself.
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There are ways to make money that do not require your parents or other family members to lend you thousands of dollars. You have the option to always look for the reasons why things WON'T work for you, or you can look for the reasons that they CAN work for you. Don't be afraid to take chances. Don't let the scared people steal your dreams. It's important to step out and fail as many times as it takes to find the means to succeed. And for the love of all things Good, DON'T BE THE A*****E THAT STEALS SOMEONE ELSES DREAM! That is all.
I notice that the argument that smart people tend to have smart children is absent. Smart people tend to make smart decisions that give them access to money. My point being GENETICS !! is a bigger part of this then we like to admit.
Being rich ≠ being smart. If you want a living, breathing example of this, just have a listen at the babblings of the deranged baboon that’s presently throwing his feces around the White House.
Load More Replies... Who said that Bezos or any of these people started off poor? Even that picture of the garage taken at face value shows a very middle class home. The whole starting in the garage thing means starting small, not coming from poverty. Poor people generally don’t have garages. Also, being a self made billionaire means that you didn’t inherit the bulk of your wealth, but rather created a business that got you where you are. It doesn’t mean that you literally never received help from anyone.
Nathan what abouts that you want to reference are the one in a million that aren't born into wealth. Just like playing professional sports and getting wealthy from it. It's a one in a million shot that it will happen.
Load More Replies... I disagree with this article big time. He misses the facts that many of the parents of these future billionaires themselves got their " wealth" from starting off poor or lower middle class and then helped their children to the next level. Almost every family in America could build generational wealth if they had that same mindset.
Also Zuckerberg and Bezos...yes they got a push by their parent, but Mark's Father it's a dentist and Jeff's Father it's not a business man, they did not have the chance to work in the "Family business" they start from scratch with a push... different story like the Winklevoss Twins, they learn from the family business, invest the family money, get supported by family employees etc.. Mark, Buffette and Bezos are Self Made Billionaires!!!!!
You ARE missing the point. Privilege gives you a leg up. Even me, as a white woman, when I would go on job interviews. I almost always got the position, and the POC sitting next to me waiting for their interview did not. These were entry level positions that only required a high school diploma. Did I have a leg up? You betcha.
Load More Replies... It matters because they are held up as paragons of "pulling yourself up from the bootstraps" and held in front of poor individuals faces as " they were poor like you, but they made it...what is your problem"? That is faulty because it presumes that the success what not a result of a well-off upbringing, education, connections and hook-ups...but simply to their "willpower". That "good idea" probably would have not taken off had he not had the money, from his parents, to produce, test, market and implement it. Others, who have equally "good ideas", but not the support and backing wealth can give, never get off the ground. It is "normal" only for those whose parents have money to give....that is the entire point.
Load More Replies... (1) He couldn't get that loan on his own merits, (2) banks charge interest that would have slowed/stopped his growth (frequently "loans" from parents are gifts). This is about the unspinning the meritocracy narrative, by pointing out that they had opportunities that only the rich could use. These aren't "just plain folks". *And* they exploit regions by not paying taxes, thanks for bringing that up. (Also, they exploit and endanger their workforce... but that isn't the issue at hand).
Load More Replies... I don't recall that he was "blaming" anyone. Simply pointing out that you don't get say you've "pulled yourself up by your bootstraps" when it just isn't so. Then call out people who aren't working hard. This isn't about being fair, but stating facts.
Load More Replies... "A quarter of a million dollars is NOT a lot of money" LOL
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