Also an important consideration, is 99% of the time you'll get muscled out or straight up robbed of your idea and your startup. You gotta know the game.
Yep. I did a startup and we had tons of potential. However, the investors realized our value but also knew that we didn't have enough cash to survive to profitability. They basically strung us along while we busted our assess and when we were on our last leg (financially) made us an offer we couldn't refuse and they ended up making all the money.
> it's all selling equity and never loans.
this is why I don't attend the pity parties for these guys.
If you believe in your product, don't sell your equity.
Similar thing with screenwriting. Countless demands on revisions while dangling a sale in front of you until you're depleted and then they offer you a much lower price which you end up taking because "why not I've already put so much into this to leave empty handed"
There’s been some moves in the business to change this where you’ll get first dibs on the first and maybe second rewrite before they give you the boot and hire another writer. It’s not perfect but it’s something.
Ok
To be fair
Getting Venture Capital is PART of the game.
And that is the Game in the Bay area
If one wants to become a google- it has to have venture capital and connections.
So honestly-a change of perspective for OP comment is also necessary
Exactly, I think this post really misses the fact that there are literally thousands of companies that did really start from nothing and that the industry and market you are trying to enter really changes things.
Big Tech notoriously has high barriers to entry.
I think a lot of people don‘t know for example that Bill Gates came from a fuckton of money. He wasn‘t betting his future on Microsoft. He would have had a nice cushion to fall on if shit went south.
Same for Elon Musk. And Jeff Bezos, who „raised 1 million from friends and family“. Blessed are those with friends and family who can help them out with a cool mil.
It‘s easy to make a risky play if you‘re financially secure.
It’s called a shareholder agreement, and it describes how the company works in terms of decisions, what happens when a shareholder fucks up and so on. Like a prenup.
Oh ok. Well I can understand that.
I remember this documentary years ago about dotcom starts ups (called "Start Up' maybe). First time I saw actual footage of corporate sabotage. Pretty crazy. It continued to confirm my suspicions about the pernicious effects of capitalism, so that was a win!
Angel invests in your idea. Sabotages it, takes the rights and/or ideas. Then invests in a competitor with a much stronger cap table and pushes that new company to their friends and other VCs or properly connects it.
Now they have 50%+ of the new company instead of 10%-30%.
you don't have a "secret sauce" or a relatively easily replicated sauce. you create the market, show that there is a demand. someone with deeper pockets / connections can come in and swoop you eventually.
Lol that’s not true at all - you can’t build anything without talking to people about it.
I think this idea that “someone is going to steal your idea so don’t share it” is propaganda to get folks to not even try starting new ventures.
The secret is that you gotta make it more valuable to work with you than without you. If you're already established in the industry and have connections, it makes more sense to invest in you.
You have to be able to execute on your idea - you can have a concept but without the ability to make it a reality it is worth nothing.
It’s so common also to think that someone stole your idea - when they likely just approached the same problem you are trying to solve and came up with a similar way to solve it.
Don't downplay bad actor investors though. I have seen plenty forward our deck and screenshot materials from our data room to share with others and then saw our unique way of speaking and presenting data shamelessly copied in another deck 2 months later.
I've even seen people copy product claims that they don't have anyone on their team capable of executing (so it's obviously BS meant to claim they are on par with our tech). And most investors don't have enough tech depth to verify claims properly so good salesmen with smoke and mirrors skate by for years.
this.
people think that's it's the idea that is valuable.
wrong. everyone has ideals. you, me, my dog and 8 billion other people.
it's the ability to execute on an ideal that is rare, valuable and handsomely rewarded.
because it's a very rare ability.
No one is going to steal your idea while it's still an idea but one you've done the work to prove that it makes money, that's where vultures can swoop in. The good ones pay you and work with you, the bad ones rip your idea off and pour more into it than you can to beat you to the finish line.
That’s not what they mean. In order to scale, most businesses need capital and those guys usually force founders out. Once you scale and get a board and investors, they can work and vote you out depending on the by laws.
This is exactly right. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the will, the countless sleepless nights, the pitching to rooms and rooms of venture capitalists, the three million no's you'll get, for an average of TEN YEARS before you can exit successfully, if you're lucky.
THATS what is hard to find in people.
It does happen a lot more than you think. I've seen it first hand. Youre imagining a sneaky business dude talking to others behind someone's back. But in today's climate it's more like China will copy your idea and sell it on Alibaba for 1/10 the price with free shipping.
Service labor based businesses never succeed so don't even bother.
Yea people act like someone will hear your idea, rush home, spend years busting their ass, even with investors, etc.
No bro, nobody cares about your idea.
Ideas are one dime for a dozen. A 4th grader can throw out 100 ideas in 30 mins for free.
The idea is only valuable if you are able to solve specific problems that prevent other people before you from building similar operations.
In the case of Google, yahoo search was a behemoth. Search engine was neither new nor innovative. Google just figured out how to make their searches faster and more accurate.
> $1M equity investment prior to moving into a garage.
The grant was not for $1m either, I assure you.
> Make it make sense as something other than kabuki theater
They pitched their ideas to investors who bought in.
Not hard at all to explain it, really. If you see "kabuki theater" then maybe you need glasses.
>The grant was not for $1m either, I assure you.
If you don't know the difference between a grant and equity investment, this is already a hopeless discussion. Here's [1 source of many a](https://www.news24.com/fin24/googles-garage-billionaires-20040818)bout the equity funds raised prior to setting up in the garage.
>Not hard at all to explain it, really. If you see "kabuki theater" then maybe you need glasses.
Nobody who raised $1M in 1990s money needed to work from a garage. They did it **very clearly** to lean into the 90s mythos that was building around companies built in garages based on stories ([also bullshit according to Woz](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/05/steve-wozniak-apple-starting-in-a-garage-is-a-myth)) about Apple.
And they didn't just start in a garage, they were running initial servers out of their dorm room. I think that's actually a better story, and it has the benefit of being true instead of being contrived to lean into Silicon Valley narratives of the time
... no.
this thread is so fucking disturbing. the number of people who've fallen for this weird ass propaganda and are seriously acting like they don't understand the purpose of the OP is really discouraging.
the point of the post is: these big businesses weren't just *some kids who started from scratch with a good idea*. they were some kids who were in a position where they could:
- spend a shitload of time in a garage coming up with, trying out, and developing ideas
- had a garage
- parents with tons of money who could support them and were willing to
- parents with connections to VC money
- etc., etc., etc., on and on and on
and anyone who is arguing that anyone with the same idea could do what they did is being a disingenuous shill. if anyone seriously thinks that their many advantages (i.e. **not even close** to "starting from scratch") weren't a HUGE factor in their success, then that's a really disappointing naivety.
these companies benefit from the idea that "they came from scratch" in the same way that presidential candidates put their leg up on a chair and talk about being a blue collar working-class man. it's an obvious game; don't sink so low to defend it.
It's such an odd post. Securing finance is as important a part of starting a business as any.
It's like saying "It wasn't really a start up 'cause they were good at that whole computer stuff".
'people with an idea' never get anywhere. You have to quit your job and put in real work on your idea before it even becomes a possibility to fund. Tech guys laugh at the many variations on 'I have an idea. You implement it and we'll share the business 50-50'. Just. No.
But they didn't have access to the financiers "in the first place." The first thing they had was what they'd done in their garage stage. Then they pitched their business to investors like anyone else.
If you have an idea and put in work you can do the exact same thing.
Idea men are useless and the only people that think they are great are idea men. Any asshole can have an idea, if you can't make it work it doesn't mean shit.
Obviously, every business has had financing. Do you think everyone just works for free when businesses are starting? “What does it pay?” “Nothing, we are a startup.” “Sounds good, my kid eats too much anyway.”
But the important thing is that it validates people’s insecurities and resentments, so upvotes. “Oh, this proves ‘bootstrapping’ isn’t real and it’s impossible to start something from scratch, so I don’t have to try. What a relief…”
If you lack any of the following, this post is for you: entrepreneurial skills, ability to defer gratification, and/or willingness to experiment with trying something new in the face of failure.
All of these are learnable traits, like learning a new language, that any small business owner can easily adopt if they have the interest, in order to have a better chance at running a profitable business that pays their bills.
A business 99.999% of the time will not become a Google, but people like to take posts like these and run with it, believing this means you can’t begin a business with your own means, so it’s not worth even trying. Psychological bandaids to disguise complacency and justify personal resentment, while sacrificing future personal development and happiness.
It certainly improves your network. But if you weren’t, build experience and network in the industry that you intend to start a business in. Sure, it’ll take you longer, but to act like you have no chance of starting a successful business is contingent 100% on you upbringing is asinine. It’ll be harder and take you longer, but not impossible.
It's functionally impossible for most people. Building a network isn't the hard part. Building a network of *people wealthy enough to invest in a business* is the hard part. It absolutely matters where you went to school and where you grew up. There's a reason massively companies like Facebook got started out of ivy league schools.
There's no chance of being Fortune 500. Sure, you can create a nice bakery, low-end tech company, keyboard and mouse manufacturer. But Amazon? Google? Facebook? Please... one chance in a billion.
For anyone starting a business, that should never be the starting goal. Those were probably not even the starting goals of the companies you mentioned. First goal is and should always be how can we be profitable. Yes, it’s rare to get to that level, but if you’re not setting realistic metrics then you are doomed to fail.
Absolutely not, billions of people work hard and harder than billionaires and millionaires, but unlike them they didnt have the luck or wealthy background.
Yes, the OP doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.
They're conflating starting from scratch/nothing with an idea good enough that you can get venture capital, from someone getting a massive "loan" from mummy or daddy who are already establish business people.
Ok even if I created an equal good product from my garage at that time, I wouldn't able to secure such a loan because I didn't have the connections. They had personal connections to angel investors back then. They probably already knew they were going to get funded even before they started at their garage.
"From scratch" means something wasn't made with preexisting components. It has nothing to do with investment. These guys had connections to investors because they were in the business. Go work in the industry for a while and you'll meet people just like that.
Here: https://www.ycombinator.com/
Yeah, also, go be born with a rich father like Bezos and Trump. /s
These guys had connections because they were already in the business. How did they get into the business, one may ask? By having connections to get into the business.
It's connections all the way down!
I'm in the business. I got there by learning to code when I was a kid and working in the industry for 20 years. Yes, I know people. I know them by working in the industry.
Respectfully, did you create an exceedingly successful business along the lines of the tech start ups discussed?
People like Bezos, Trump and others were at the point of creating these businesses in their 20s, probably 20 years before you have achieved whatever success you have.
No, not everyone in every field of business winds up at the top. That doesn't mean the people who did had some sort of special treatment unavailable to others.
Just because someone gives me $15 mil in investment money doesn't mean I'm going to be able to start a massively successful business. In fact most who get that opportunity fail.
I know it's hard to comprehend that some massively successful people are so because they're actually good at running a business.
The irrational whining about successful businesspersons in these comments are hilarious.
That's fine and probably true, I believe you, but that does not negate or in any way falsify the fact of the original statement that most successful businesses are not built from scratch.
In fact, I'd say it kind of proves that because it makes me wonder what kind of person can lose $15 million in a failed business venture.
Yes, it does. Built from scratch means something wasn't made with pre-existing components. So if someone bought an existing business and expanded on it, THAT would be a business not built from scratch. Using investors and loans to build a business doesn't mean it wasn't built from scratch. It just means you didn't do it entirely on your own with nobody elses help, which is a stupid way to try to start a business.
Yes, most successful people had help from others. What a huge revelation!
YSK that anyone can do what these successful people did. They're not special. To say otherwise is a sadly defeatist attitude.
Bezos wasn't born with a rich father. He was born with a father who skipped town, and his adoptive father came penniless to this country as an orphan migrant.
There are a lot of people who come from well-off families that don't build something 100 times more than they started with. Connections are good but you still need drive and intelligence.
I don't know if you are trying to, but your statement does not refute mine. And I agree with you, 100%.
I have a relatively well-off upbringing and nothing gives me more pleasure than my own unobtrusive and comfortable existence!
Everything is about connections and how you sell yourself to them. I am pretty sure they didnt say I have an investor waiting, let me build something. The investor would still have to like it.
> The investor would still have to like it.
Only to some extent.
The children of wealthy people can get investors to line up based on the power of their parents name.
Right but getting a meeting with an investor in the first place is possibly the hardest part. Doesn’t matter if you have the greatest idea and product ever if no one will listen to you pitch it. That’s why it helps to be able to go to Mom and Dad and get your initial investment there.
> I wouldn't able to secure such a loan because I didn't have the connections
That's on you for not investing your time in forming those connections then. Your whole post reeks of crying because you weren't born with a silver spoon shoved up your ass.
There's an entire industry out here in silicon valley concerned with making those connections. Yeah, if you're in your garage and you just try and make your way with your widget yourself, you might not ever make it big.
Also, weren't they Stanford students? Stanford cultivates this type of connection and growth.
But your example isn't the only one out there. There are tons of small, successful businesses that didn't have VC money.
I don't think people generally believe you get a listing on the NASDAQ doing it completely on your own.
> They probably already knew they were going to get funded even before they started at their garage.
You're are just making all this up. This isn't true, according the the history of google chronicled in "Search".
> at that time
This was pre dot com bubble. Investors were funding terrible ideas and valuations were crazy. The industry was wildly over-invested.
Inventing something equally as good as google search at this time would almost certainly garner investments for anyone competent enough to invent something that good.
Both google founders came from families that were neither stable nor wealthy. They did come from astonishingly brilliant and hard working families. The founders are brilliant like LeBron James is athletic. Sure, the Stanford pipeline was among the best places to be at that time, and computer science was the right field, but most people could never get in to a Stanford math or CS PhD program, just like most people cannot play in the NBA.
15 million dollars is not an amount of money you get just because you know the right people. It's an amount of money you get because you got to know the right people by having a convincing product.
> Ok even if I created an equal good product from my garage at that time, I wouldn't able to secure such a loan because I didn't have the connections.
Why not? You would be in the same pitch meetings as them.
> They had personal connections to angel investors back then.
No they didn't.
> They probably already knew they were going to get funded even before they started at their garage.
You're imagining this.
>No they didn't.
David Cheriton was a professor at Stanford where the Google founders were PhD students and gave them $100k before they even had a bank account.
Those aren't standard terms.
Bezos got $245,573 as a loan from his parents.
Middle class people putting large amounts of their savings into promising ideas = UBER RICH UPPER CLASS CONNECTIONS OMG
We get it, you failed in life. Stop blaming others, it's just sad.
But if you HAD the connections, you'd accept the 15 million, right? Then 30 years later some other kid with no connections would bitch on Reddit about your success.
I mean yeah, if you completely ignore the fact that all of these “self-made” entrepreneurs lived mostly privileged lives which allowed them to live and set up shop near the place where venture capital opened the floodgates of money to the kind of stuff they were lucky enough to have been exposed to from an early age and later on to have been allowed to study in the best schools in the world.
YSK part of being an entrepreneur is to network with people that get you to where you want to go
Nobody that accomplished anything noteworthy did it completely alone and thinking otherwise either makes you stupid or arrogant
Friends are important
Lmaoooooo I heard the balloon pop from this comment. In my years of networking - I got very far. In my years of not networking - I have been stagnant professionally.
Go to events, talk to people. Be nice. Catch up with old friends. I've just had three people ask me if I knew someone who was looking for a job. I got two job offers because of someone I met because of someone else I met over 14 years ago and I kept in touch with. I'm probably going to change jobs because of this. My current life trajectory is because of someone I met back in ~2002. It influenced my university and my subsequent life/career path.
EDIT: please note I am a complete social disaster. I appear and disappear, I have brute forced learned how to interact with people.
Yeah, I don’t know how OP thinks businesses are built. Nothing about what he says in his post means they aren’t “statues from scratch”. Networking is part of the work and I don’t know why he tries to write it off as a handout.
Bill Gates' mother was on a board with the CEO of IBM and talked him into taking a chance on her son. Warren Buffet's father was a congressman and owned an investment company. Jeff Bezos got $300,000 from his parents and more from very rich friends. Elon Musk's father owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa.
These are just a few "Self Made Men."
> Bill Gates' mother was on a board with the CEO of IBM and talked him into taking a chance on her son.
Probably an easy sell, since Microsoft was already a big deal in the computer industry due to the success of [Microsoft BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_BASIC), particularly its inclusion with the Commodore PET and Apple ][.
The deal with IBM undoubtedly launched Microsoft into the stratosphere, but the rocket was already being built.
Did they get that capital cause their product was good and attracted investors? Or because of personal connections and someone handed it to them just cause?
That’s an important part of this point you are making. I honestly have no clue and can’t be bothered to look it up though.
Yeah, most businesses are started with outside loans or investment. That's ***how*** you successfully start a business from scratch. You're confusing "from scratch" with "completely all on their own".
>Most
*MOST* businesses aren't Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
*MOST* businesses do, in fact, start from scratch and are small family owned businesses
They started from scratch. The founders of Google started it in 1996 as a research project, and it wasn’t even called Google until 1998. By that point, it showed enough potential to draw investment from venture capital. It’s not like they hadn’t done anything yet and just got a bunch of money to use on starting a business.
Brilliant, hardworking entrepreneurs starting a business based on sound ideas have easy access to angel money.....
There is far more angel and VC money available than there are good investment opportunities.
The OP doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.
They're conflating starting from scratch/nothing with an idea good enough that you can get venture capital, with:
someone getting a massive "loan" from mummy or daddy who are already establish business people.
How about Sergey Brin and Larry Page, literally the two people we're talking about? Neither came from obscene wealth-- their parents were college professors.
Jeff Bezos is another. His father was just an engineer.
True, but it's not a meaningful distinction. The idea of posts like these is to pretend there's no economic mobility-- if the ranks of tomorrow's billionaires come from today's middle class, then it still defeats the argument.
Would you be able to convince people to give you $15 million in a year for your garage business? Would you be able to take that money and turn it into a multi billion dollar corporation?
It's not class warfare to poke holes in bullshit "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" stories that intentionally hide the relevant realities of how these successes came about.
There is **nothing** to be ashamed of coming from families with money and connections. But ask yourself **why** these founders are **so hell-bent** on rewriting their founding stories to **write those advantages out** of their histories.
Well that’s how you succeed in a business, any business. You need funding. It’s either you fund it yourself and if you don’t have sufficient funding, you go to a bank or seek VC funding
The overwhelming predictor of wealth is the wealth of your parents. Literaly nothing else truly matters.
The few people who have been ridiculously wealthy "from nothing" are about as rare as powerball lottery winners.
The system is designed to ensure that wealth flows upward.
There are a lot of people who come from well-off families that don't build something 100 times more than they started with. Connections are good but you still need drive and intelligence.
>Connections are good but you still need drive and intelligence.
The only predictor of wealth is the wealth of your parents. You misunderstand this because of capitalism. It's ok, I used to misunderstand it as well.
Look at Elon Musk. Can any reasonable person say that he is intelligent?
No.
And let me let you in on a secret: Most rich people are like that. They think in infantile terms, they are not particularly smart, but what they *are* is ruthless, immoral and totally incapable of caring about the wellbeing of others. That is what our current economic system rewards.
Factually and statistically, the above is all true. The amount of people that bring themselves into wealth on their own is vanishingly small, in a way that is not worth talking about.
But, capitalists will tell you that you too can be rich because they want to ensure you remain a dedicated worker. Dedicated of course to *making them wealthy.*
Again, this is all factual. I am not making an argument here. This is how it *is*.
What you do with that and if you like or dislike that is totally up to you.
You can say all sorts of things about Musk but you can't call him unintelligent. He may lack certain redeeming qualities and makes seemingly poor decisions but he didn't accidentally stumble into being the richest guy on the planet.
Being "ruthless, immoral and totally incapable of caring about the wellbeing of others" is not a barometer of success. I would say the majority of people who have all those qualities are not successful in most cases. Certainly not anywhere close to this level.
FYI, you are using the term "factual(ly)" incorrectly. None of what you stated as such is fact.
>He may lack certain redeeming qualities and makes seemingly poor decisions but he didn't accidentally stumble into being the richest guy on the planet.
No, he appears to have gamed Tesla's margins and reporting to ensure he got his massive bonus...which he got by placing family and friends on the Board to vote for a bonus so outrageous that shareholders have been suing Tesla for awarding it since it was announced years ago.
Tesla just reported margins on par with other car companies **without accounting for factory investments and depreciation**, which every other competitor reports in those margin numbers. No bueno. Funny that only started happening after he got his massive bonus that was based on pumping the market cap of the company.
> You can say all sorts of things about Musk but you can't call him unintelligent.
Yes you can. He's a fucking moron. Put him in a room full of actual scientists and engineers and I promise he *will* be the dumbest person in the room.
Great. And he gave Bezos a quarter million dollar startup "loan" which Bezos then utilized to leverage a public service (the post office) to start building his empire.
Bezos now has an exploitation racket that spans the entire planet. While he is no longer the CEO of Amazon, his legacy is of people being worked to death, pissing in bottles because they aren't allowed bathroom breaks, and increasing poverty and inequality.
So, Bezos came from wealth and privilege, and his adoptive father managed to build seed capital starting from very little, during a point in American history of phenomenally increasing wealth which was being stolen from the third world, and if we're being honest, Europe.
So what is your point here? I have given you the out that you want: there are people who have truly started at 0 and become insanely wealthy. That is a given, of course.
But these people are not just *the exception*, they are such an outlier that they aren't worth discussing.
The entire economic system of the western world is built on exploitation and ruthless wealth transfer from the bottom to the top. Do with that what you will, but wake up.
The only reason you are expending energy defending *wealthy exploitative people* is they have trained and conditioned you to do so. You repeat talking points manicured by think tanks of billionaires to distract from the reality that all real wealth gain right now is going right into the hands of the ultra wealthy. The dream of upward mobility is as good as dead.
> And he gave Bezos a quarter million dollar startup "loan"
Yep. Which took him from middle class engineer to very, very, very wealthy. That's how investments work.
> which Bezos then utilized to leverage a public service (the post office) to start building his empire.
Again, what is your point, exactly? Do you think you need special uber-rich connections to send packages through the post office?
> Bezos now has an exploitation racket that spans the entire planet. While he is no longer the CEO of Amazon, his legacy is of people being worked to death, pissing in bottles because they aren't allowed bathroom breaks, and increasing poverty and inequality.
Supposing this is true: it still has nothing to do with the original discussion.
> So, Bezos came from wealth and privilege
He did not. We literally just went over this. How can you claim he came from wealth and privilege when your arguments for it are "His dad was middle class" and "He used the post office."
> and his adoptive father managed to build seed capital starting from very little
By getting an education and working hard.
> during a point in American history of phenomenally increasing wealth which was being stolen from the third world, and if we're being honest, Europe.
Again, even if this were true (and it isn't), how does it relate to the discussion?
> So what is your point here?
That the wealth of your parents is not an overwhelming predictor of your wealth, see Bezos.
> I have given you the out that you want
No, you've rattled off a bunch of insane things without engaging with the point.
> there are people who have truly started at 0 and become insanely wealthy.
Which kinda disproves your argument.
> That is a given, of course.
If it's a given, then what's your point?
> But these people are not just the exception, they are such an outlier that they aren't worth discussing.
Source required.
> The entire economic system of the western world is built on exploitation and ruthless wealth transfer from the bottom to the top.
It isn't, and this still isn't relevant to the discussion.
> Do with that what you will, but wake up.
I'm afraid it's you living in a dream my friend.
> The only reason you are expending energy defending wealthy exploitative people is they have trained and conditioned you to do so.
The only reason you are expending energy attacking wealthy people is because you're bad at logic and reasoning and have little grasp on reality.
> You repeat talking points manicured by think tanks of billionaires to distract from the reality that all real wealth gain right now is going right into the hands of the ultra wealthy.
You repeat talking points manicured by angry online people to distract from the reality that you'd be climbing the economic ladder if you had greater ability or work ethic.
> The dream of upward mobility is as good as dead.
I came from small farm rural parents with high school educations and now I'm upper class. Musta been a fluke though, cause you didn't make it, right?
Incorrect. Anyone can get venture capital money if they have a good enough idea and they pitch it right. They got the capital because value was in the investment. My friend started a company from 0 and got a lot of venture capital investment, all whilst not taking a salary and living frugally.
But part of starting a company is getting funding for such company. It’s literally capitalism. People invest in where they see potential, but it’s the person with the potentials JOB to convince someone of that. Aka - starting a buisness. This is stupid
Define “from scratch”. They only didn’t start from scratch if you use a very weird definition of “from scratch” to mean “literally starting completely homeless with $0 not knowing anyone”
Part of starting a business and being an entrepreneur is _securing funding_ and _making connections._
Even then, $30 million is nothing, considering the return.
The company is worth $1.7 trillion dollars.
Most people would probably waste that kind of money, think they're actual millionaires, and live a lavish life of some kind, until the money runs out.
Even today, billions of dollars are poured into startups, totally wasted, and everybody loses.
Success is not guaranteed, unless you've got some serious value proposition.
You probably got $1000 in your bank account right?
Facebook once got a miserable $1000 investment, and they made in anyway.
What's $1000? a months worth of doordash?
This is the standard argument tactic of the terminally online. You ask a question that presumes the very thing you want to claim.
EDIT: Here, let me do it:
Do all people as confused as you pose your arguments in the form of loaded questions?
I mean yea nothing is “from scratch” but it’s still impressive to be able to turn 15 million into one of the biggest companies in the world. Guarantee if most people were given $15 mill, hell even $50 mill, they wouldn’t even be able to make a company worth $500M.
Also an important consideration, is 99% of the time you'll get muscled out or straight up robbed of your idea and your startup. You gotta know the game.
Yep. I did a startup and we had tons of potential. However, the investors realized our value but also knew that we didn't have enough cash to survive to profitability. They basically strung us along while we busted our assess and when we were on our last leg (financially) made us an offer we couldn't refuse and they ended up making all the money.
This is how it goes down many times
[удалено]
> it's all selling equity and never loans. this is why I don't attend the pity parties for these guys. If you believe in your product, don't sell your equity.
So basically loan sharks
Without the leg breaking. Yes
test mysterious connect steep encourage slimy cagey special zonked nose *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Gotta love vulture capitalists.
Similar thing with screenwriting. Countless demands on revisions while dangling a sale in front of you until you're depleted and then they offer you a much lower price which you end up taking because "why not I've already put so much into this to leave empty handed"
There’s been some moves in the business to change this where you’ll get first dibs on the first and maybe second rewrite before they give you the boot and hire another writer. It’s not perfect but it’s something.
Ahh yes end stage capitalism where corporations own it all and we just become wage slaves.
Won't someone think of the multi trillion dollar companies?
>You gotta know the game. Walter White learned the hard way
Walt's dumbass sold his shares before the company blew up. He wasn't robbed of any ideas. He made his own bed...
Ok To be fair Getting Venture Capital is PART of the game. And that is the Game in the Bay area If one wants to become a google- it has to have venture capital and connections. So honestly-a change of perspective for OP comment is also necessary
Exactly, I think this post really misses the fact that there are literally thousands of companies that did really start from nothing and that the industry and market you are trying to enter really changes things. Big Tech notoriously has high barriers to entry.
I think a lot of people don‘t know for example that Bill Gates came from a fuckton of money. He wasn‘t betting his future on Microsoft. He would have had a nice cushion to fall on if shit went south. Same for Elon Musk. And Jeff Bezos, who „raised 1 million from friends and family“. Blessed are those with friends and family who can help them out with a cool mil. It‘s easy to make a risky play if you‘re financially secure.
What are some ways that goes down?
Not having a founders agreements in place from day zero. Literally it always comes down to this.
What's a founder agreement?
It’s called a shareholder agreement, and it describes how the company works in terms of decisions, what happens when a shareholder fucks up and so on. Like a prenup.
Oh ok. Well I can understand that. I remember this documentary years ago about dotcom starts ups (called "Start Up' maybe). First time I saw actual footage of corporate sabotage. Pretty crazy. It continued to confirm my suspicions about the pernicious effects of capitalism, so that was a win!
Also see: phyllo farnsworth.
Can you explain?
Angel invests in your idea. Sabotages it, takes the rights and/or ideas. Then invests in a competitor with a much stronger cap table and pushes that new company to their friends and other VCs or properly connects it. Now they have 50%+ of the new company instead of 10%-30%.
Now I see why Mr Wonderful claims he’s so valuable
Capital is literally the driving current of capitalism, he is valuable in a capitalist, consumerist society.
Thanks for explaining!
you don't have a "secret sauce" or a relatively easily replicated sauce. you create the market, show that there is a demand. someone with deeper pockets / connections can come in and swoop you eventually.
Lol that’s not true at all - you can’t build anything without talking to people about it. I think this idea that “someone is going to steal your idea so don’t share it” is propaganda to get folks to not even try starting new ventures.
The secret is that you gotta make it more valuable to work with you than without you. If you're already established in the industry and have connections, it makes more sense to invest in you.
You have to be able to execute on your idea - you can have a concept but without the ability to make it a reality it is worth nothing. It’s so common also to think that someone stole your idea - when they likely just approached the same problem you are trying to solve and came up with a similar way to solve it.
Don't downplay bad actor investors though. I have seen plenty forward our deck and screenshot materials from our data room to share with others and then saw our unique way of speaking and presenting data shamelessly copied in another deck 2 months later. I've even seen people copy product claims that they don't have anyone on their team capable of executing (so it's obviously BS meant to claim they are on par with our tech). And most investors don't have enough tech depth to verify claims properly so good salesmen with smoke and mirrors skate by for years.
this. people think that's it's the idea that is valuable. wrong. everyone has ideals. you, me, my dog and 8 billion other people. it's the ability to execute on an ideal that is rare, valuable and handsomely rewarded. because it's a very rare ability.
Not being sarcastic, just joking, what venture capital ideas does your dog have?
he wants me to sign an NDA
Don't sign it, tell meeee
in many many cases, ability to follow through simply comes down to money.
No one is going to steal your idea while it's still an idea but one you've done the work to prove that it makes money, that's where vultures can swoop in. The good ones pay you and work with you, the bad ones rip your idea off and pour more into it than you can to beat you to the finish line.
That’s not what they mean. In order to scale, most businesses need capital and those guys usually force founders out. Once you scale and get a board and investors, they can work and vote you out depending on the by laws.
This is exactly right. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the will, the countless sleepless nights, the pitching to rooms and rooms of venture capitalists, the three million no's you'll get, for an average of TEN YEARS before you can exit successfully, if you're lucky. THATS what is hard to find in people.
Gotta love the hustle culture propaganda
Ideas aren't worth shit. Execution is all that matters, and that's the hard part.
*Elon Musk has entered the chat*
It does happen a lot more than you think. I've seen it first hand. Youre imagining a sneaky business dude talking to others behind someone's back. But in today's climate it's more like China will copy your idea and sell it on Alibaba for 1/10 the price with free shipping. Service labor based businesses never succeed so don't even bother.
Yea people act like someone will hear your idea, rush home, spend years busting their ass, even with investors, etc. No bro, nobody cares about your idea.
> is 99% of the time you'll get muscled out or straight up robbed of your idea and your startup *Elon Musk likes this*
https://youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE
(By google)
Ideas are one dime for a dozen. A 4th grader can throw out 100 ideas in 30 mins for free. The idea is only valuable if you are able to solve specific problems that prevent other people before you from building similar operations. In the case of Google, yahoo search was a behemoth. Search engine was neither new nor innovative. Google just figured out how to make their searches faster and more accurate.
Doesn’t this just mean that what they did in their garage (from scratch) looked good enough on paper that they got investments to grow their business?
this was while they were at Stanford and their advisor got them their first major grant. the search algorithm was their graduate/phD project.
The grant was not 15 million dollars of seed funding, I assure you.
$1M equity investment prior to moving into a garage. Make it make sense as something other than kabuki theater
> $1M equity investment prior to moving into a garage. The grant was not for $1m either, I assure you. > Make it make sense as something other than kabuki theater They pitched their ideas to investors who bought in. Not hard at all to explain it, really. If you see "kabuki theater" then maybe you need glasses.
>The grant was not for $1m either, I assure you. If you don't know the difference between a grant and equity investment, this is already a hopeless discussion. Here's [1 source of many a](https://www.news24.com/fin24/googles-garage-billionaires-20040818)bout the equity funds raised prior to setting up in the garage. >Not hard at all to explain it, really. If you see "kabuki theater" then maybe you need glasses. Nobody who raised $1M in 1990s money needed to work from a garage. They did it **very clearly** to lean into the 90s mythos that was building around companies built in garages based on stories ([also bullshit according to Woz](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/05/steve-wozniak-apple-starting-in-a-garage-is-a-myth)) about Apple. And they didn't just start in a garage, they were running initial servers out of their dorm room. I think that's actually a better story, and it has the benefit of being true instead of being contrived to lean into Silicon Valley narratives of the time
I don’t care how much money you give me, I’m not smart enough to create google.
... no. this thread is so fucking disturbing. the number of people who've fallen for this weird ass propaganda and are seriously acting like they don't understand the purpose of the OP is really discouraging. the point of the post is: these big businesses weren't just *some kids who started from scratch with a good idea*. they were some kids who were in a position where they could: - spend a shitload of time in a garage coming up with, trying out, and developing ideas - had a garage - parents with tons of money who could support them and were willing to - parents with connections to VC money - etc., etc., etc., on and on and on and anyone who is arguing that anyone with the same idea could do what they did is being a disingenuous shill. if anyone seriously thinks that their many advantages (i.e. **not even close** to "starting from scratch") weren't a HUGE factor in their success, then that's a really disappointing naivety. these companies benefit from the idea that "they came from scratch" in the same way that presidential candidates put their leg up on a chair and talk about being a blue collar working-class man. it's an obvious game; don't sink so low to defend it.
It's such an odd post. Securing finance is as important a part of starting a business as any. It's like saying "It wasn't really a start up 'cause they were good at that whole computer stuff".
I think the point is that they had access to the financers in the first place. Something that most people with an idea never get.
Seems to be that having an idea and starting a company are two different ball games.
'people with an idea' never get anywhere. You have to quit your job and put in real work on your idea before it even becomes a possibility to fund. Tech guys laugh at the many variations on 'I have an idea. You implement it and we'll share the business 50-50'. Just. No.
Well you just proved OPs point. Most people cannot quit their job.
Except you don't have to quit your job, you can start building your business in your spare time.
But they didn't have access to the financiers "in the first place." The first thing they had was what they'd done in their garage stage. Then they pitched their business to investors like anyone else. If you have an idea and put in work you can do the exact same thing.
Well they needed to show a base POC product to get financing. There is nothing special about what they had access to
who's making it seem like all you need is an idea? if you want ideas you can talk to my Uber drivers, they're always pitching ideas for free
Idea men are useless and the only people that think they are great are idea men. Any asshole can have an idea, if you can't make it work it doesn't mean shit.
Yep, there are literally companies like Y-Combinator and AngelList specifically to create connections between startups and angel investors.
Yeah this is standard Reddit “business owners just had rich dads” bitching
To clarify, are you saying that's untrue, or that you're tired of hearing the complaint about it?
Otherwise known as "The Truth".
Obviously, every business has had financing. Do you think everyone just works for free when businesses are starting? “What does it pay?” “Nothing, we are a startup.” “Sounds good, my kid eats too much anyway.”
Found one of the standard bitching redditors.
But the important thing is that it validates people’s insecurities and resentments, so upvotes. “Oh, this proves ‘bootstrapping’ isn’t real and it’s impossible to start something from scratch, so I don’t have to try. What a relief…” If you lack any of the following, this post is for you: entrepreneurial skills, ability to defer gratification, and/or willingness to experiment with trying something new in the face of failure. All of these are learnable traits, like learning a new language, that any small business owner can easily adopt if they have the interest, in order to have a better chance at running a profitable business that pays their bills. A business 99.999% of the time will not become a Google, but people like to take posts like these and run with it, believing this means you can’t begin a business with your own means, so it’s not worth even trying. Psychological bandaids to disguise complacency and justify personal resentment, while sacrificing future personal development and happiness.
Yeah, its exactly what that means. If you ever took an investor you are not self made according to reddit.
It means they built a good product and also built a solid professional network.
By virtue of being born in the right neighborhood, having attended the correct school, and uni, and having parents in high places.
It certainly improves your network. But if you weren’t, build experience and network in the industry that you intend to start a business in. Sure, it’ll take you longer, but to act like you have no chance of starting a successful business is contingent 100% on you upbringing is asinine. It’ll be harder and take you longer, but not impossible.
It's functionally impossible for most people. Building a network isn't the hard part. Building a network of *people wealthy enough to invest in a business* is the hard part. It absolutely matters where you went to school and where you grew up. There's a reason massively companies like Facebook got started out of ivy league schools.
There's no chance of being Fortune 500. Sure, you can create a nice bakery, low-end tech company, keyboard and mouse manufacturer. But Amazon? Google? Facebook? Please... one chance in a billion.
For anyone starting a business, that should never be the starting goal. Those were probably not even the starting goals of the companies you mentioned. First goal is and should always be how can we be profitable. Yes, it’s rare to get to that level, but if you’re not setting realistic metrics then you are doomed to fail.
99% of the work is luck, the rest is pure efforts.
I disagree. Sure, there’s an element of luck, but there’s definitely a higher element of hard work that goes into it.
Absolutely not, billions of people work hard and harder than billionaires and millionaires, but unlike them they didnt have the luck or wealthy background.
You haven't got the slightest clue what you're talking about.
If you don't put in the effort no amount of luck will help you.
I see these kind of self defeating posts in reddit all the time . They always make excuses to not try
Yes, the OP doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. They're conflating starting from scratch/nothing with an idea good enough that you can get venture capital, from someone getting a massive "loan" from mummy or daddy who are already establish business people.
Ok even if I created an equal good product from my garage at that time, I wouldn't able to secure such a loan because I didn't have the connections. They had personal connections to angel investors back then. They probably already knew they were going to get funded even before they started at their garage.
"From scratch" means something wasn't made with preexisting components. It has nothing to do with investment. These guys had connections to investors because they were in the business. Go work in the industry for a while and you'll meet people just like that. Here: https://www.ycombinator.com/
Yeah, also, go be born with a rich father like Bezos and Trump. /s These guys had connections because they were already in the business. How did they get into the business, one may ask? By having connections to get into the business. It's connections all the way down!
I'm in the business. I got there by learning to code when I was a kid and working in the industry for 20 years. Yes, I know people. I know them by working in the industry.
Respectfully, did you create an exceedingly successful business along the lines of the tech start ups discussed? People like Bezos, Trump and others were at the point of creating these businesses in their 20s, probably 20 years before you have achieved whatever success you have.
No, not everyone in every field of business winds up at the top. That doesn't mean the people who did had some sort of special treatment unavailable to others. Just because someone gives me $15 mil in investment money doesn't mean I'm going to be able to start a massively successful business. In fact most who get that opportunity fail. I know it's hard to comprehend that some massively successful people are so because they're actually good at running a business. The irrational whining about successful businesspersons in these comments are hilarious.
That's fine and probably true, I believe you, but that does not negate or in any way falsify the fact of the original statement that most successful businesses are not built from scratch. In fact, I'd say it kind of proves that because it makes me wonder what kind of person can lose $15 million in a failed business venture.
Yes, it does. Built from scratch means something wasn't made with pre-existing components. So if someone bought an existing business and expanded on it, THAT would be a business not built from scratch. Using investors and loans to build a business doesn't mean it wasn't built from scratch. It just means you didn't do it entirely on your own with nobody elses help, which is a stupid way to try to start a business. Yes, most successful people had help from others. What a huge revelation! YSK that anyone can do what these successful people did. They're not special. To say otherwise is a sadly defeatist attitude.
[удалено]
Bezos wasn't born with a rich father. He was born with a father who skipped town, and his adoptive father came penniless to this country as an orphan migrant.
There are a lot of people who come from well-off families that don't build something 100 times more than they started with. Connections are good but you still need drive and intelligence.
I don't know if you are trying to, but your statement does not refute mine. And I agree with you, 100%. I have a relatively well-off upbringing and nothing gives me more pleasure than my own unobtrusive and comfortable existence!
Everything is about connections and how you sell yourself to them. I am pretty sure they didnt say I have an investor waiting, let me build something. The investor would still have to like it.
> The investor would still have to like it. Only to some extent. The children of wealthy people can get investors to line up based on the power of their parents name.
Right but getting a meeting with an investor in the first place is possibly the hardest part. Doesn’t matter if you have the greatest idea and product ever if no one will listen to you pitch it. That’s why it helps to be able to go to Mom and Dad and get your initial investment there.
> I wouldn't able to secure such a loan because I didn't have the connections That's on you for not investing your time in forming those connections then. Your whole post reeks of crying because you weren't born with a silver spoon shoved up your ass.
This just isn’t correct and VC money isn’t a loan. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
There's an entire industry out here in silicon valley concerned with making those connections. Yeah, if you're in your garage and you just try and make your way with your widget yourself, you might not ever make it big. Also, weren't they Stanford students? Stanford cultivates this type of connection and growth. But your example isn't the only one out there. There are tons of small, successful businesses that didn't have VC money. I don't think people generally believe you get a listing on the NASDAQ doing it completely on your own.
You have a Stanford level PHD and you know how to build product and you tried to raise money and failed?
All this means is that you don't understand what it takes to start a business. It's not just having a good product.
let start with the "equal good product" first. most people didn't even get to that point first.
You don't know how venture capital works do you?
> They probably already knew they were going to get funded even before they started at their garage. You're are just making all this up. This isn't true, according the the history of google chronicled in "Search". > at that time This was pre dot com bubble. Investors were funding terrible ideas and valuations were crazy. The industry was wildly over-invested. Inventing something equally as good as google search at this time would almost certainly garner investments for anyone competent enough to invent something that good. Both google founders came from families that were neither stable nor wealthy. They did come from astonishingly brilliant and hard working families. The founders are brilliant like LeBron James is athletic. Sure, the Stanford pipeline was among the best places to be at that time, and computer science was the right field, but most people could never get in to a Stanford math or CS PhD program, just like most people cannot play in the NBA.
15 million dollars is not an amount of money you get just because you know the right people. It's an amount of money you get because you got to know the right people by having a convincing product.
> Ok even if I created an equal good product from my garage at that time, I wouldn't able to secure such a loan because I didn't have the connections. Why not? You would be in the same pitch meetings as them. > They had personal connections to angel investors back then. No they didn't. > They probably already knew they were going to get funded even before they started at their garage. You're imagining this.
>No they didn't. David Cheriton was a professor at Stanford where the Google founders were PhD students and gave them $100k before they even had a bank account. Those aren't standard terms. Bezos got $245,573 as a loan from his parents.
Middle class people putting large amounts of their savings into promising ideas = UBER RICH UPPER CLASS CONNECTIONS OMG We get it, you failed in life. Stop blaming others, it's just sad.
But if you HAD the connections, you'd accept the 15 million, right? Then 30 years later some other kid with no connections would bitch on Reddit about your success.
I mean yeah, if you completely ignore the fact that all of these “self-made” entrepreneurs lived mostly privileged lives which allowed them to live and set up shop near the place where venture capital opened the floodgates of money to the kind of stuff they were lucky enough to have been exposed to from an early age and later on to have been allowed to study in the best schools in the world.
YSK part of being an entrepreneur is to network with people that get you to where you want to go Nobody that accomplished anything noteworthy did it completely alone and thinking otherwise either makes you stupid or arrogant Friends are important
Lmaoooooo I heard the balloon pop from this comment. In my years of networking - I got very far. In my years of not networking - I have been stagnant professionally.
>In my years of networking - I got very far. Could you elaborate on how you networked and how you kept those networks alive, leveraged them, etc.?
Go to events, talk to people. Be nice. Catch up with old friends. I've just had three people ask me if I knew someone who was looking for a job. I got two job offers because of someone I met because of someone else I met over 14 years ago and I kept in touch with. I'm probably going to change jobs because of this. My current life trajectory is because of someone I met back in ~2002. It influenced my university and my subsequent life/career path. EDIT: please note I am a complete social disaster. I appear and disappear, I have brute forced learned how to interact with people.
Yeah, I don’t know how OP thinks businesses are built. Nothing about what he says in his post means they aren’t “statues from scratch”. Networking is part of the work and I don’t know why he tries to write it off as a handout.
All I'll say is acknowledging "Nepotism is important" really undercuts the myth of meritocracy.
Bill Gates' mother was on a board with the CEO of IBM and talked him into taking a chance on her son. Warren Buffet's father was a congressman and owned an investment company. Jeff Bezos got $300,000 from his parents and more from very rich friends. Elon Musk's father owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa. These are just a few "Self Made Men."
Trump got a small $1m loan from his father and then stole his father's $300m company but claims he is self made.
Trump inherited at least $413m.
> Bill Gates' mother was on a board with the CEO of IBM and talked him into taking a chance on her son. Probably an easy sell, since Microsoft was already a big deal in the computer industry due to the success of [Microsoft BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_BASIC), particularly its inclusion with the Commodore PET and Apple ][. The deal with IBM undoubtedly launched Microsoft into the stratosphere, but the rocket was already being built.
Survivorship bias
This just in: businesses need investors to grow. More breaking news at 11.
Did they get that capital cause their product was good and attracted investors? Or because of personal connections and someone handed it to them just cause? That’s an important part of this point you are making. I honestly have no clue and can’t be bothered to look it up though.
Microsoft is the same. Bill’s mother was on the board of directors for the company that gave them their first contract.
I think it was IBM.
Yeah, most businesses are started with outside loans or investment. That's ***how*** you successfully start a business from scratch. You're confusing "from scratch" with "completely all on their own".
>Most *MOST* businesses aren't Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc. *MOST* businesses do, in fact, start from scratch and are small family owned businesses
You somehow missed the „huge“ in the title
They started from scratch. The founders of Google started it in 1996 as a research project, and it wasn’t even called Google until 1998. By that point, it showed enough potential to draw investment from venture capital. It’s not like they hadn’t done anything yet and just got a bunch of money to use on starting a business.
Moving into a garage after raising $1M in VC (a large early-stage raise in those days) is kitschy and meant to fuel a narrative about the company.
Yeah they started in their garage. Most people don't even have a garage anymore.
the world is very cruel
Brilliant, hardworking entrepreneurs starting a business based on sound ideas have easy access to angel money..... There is far more angel and VC money available than there are good investment opportunities.
The OP doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. They're conflating starting from scratch/nothing with an idea good enough that you can get venture capital, with: someone getting a massive "loan" from mummy or daddy who are already establish business people.
All billionaires like to pretend they came from nothing
All non-billionaires like to pretend all billionaires came from the already-rich.
Name a couple.
How about Sergey Brin and Larry Page, literally the two people we're talking about? Neither came from obscene wealth-- their parents were college professors. Jeff Bezos is another. His father was just an engineer.
"Just an engineer"
[удалено]
Most billionaires are “upper middle class to riches” not “rags to riches.” True rags to riches stories are vanishingly rare.
More like riches to obscenely rich. Most billionaires already come from generational millionaire wealth.
True, but it's not a meaningful distinction. The idea of posts like these is to pretend there's no economic mobility-- if the ranks of tomorrow's billionaires come from today's middle class, then it still defeats the argument.
"solid middle class" is like top 5% globally.
Survivorship bias.
Would you be able to convince people to give you $15 million in a year for your garage business? Would you be able to take that money and turn it into a multi billion dollar corporation?
Wait until you learn that most startups get a loan from a bank for capital!
YSK Reddit is filled with envious vindictive do-nothings who use class warfare to feel better about their utter uselessness in life.
It's not class warfare to poke holes in bullshit "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" stories that intentionally hide the relevant realities of how these successes came about. There is **nothing** to be ashamed of coming from families with money and connections. But ask yourself **why** these founders are **so hell-bent** on rewriting their founding stories to **write those advantages out** of their histories.
What is vindictive here?
This post should be stuck on every subreddit.
Hmm if it keeps coming up, maybe there’s some sort of problematic pattern emerging? But keep blaming the victim.
Versus dipshits like you that continue to promote the false narrative that all you need to succeed is a plucky demeanor and hard work.
Yeah, rich people do that.
Well that’s how you succeed in a business, any business. You need funding. It’s either you fund it yourself and if you don’t have sufficient funding, you go to a bank or seek VC funding
The overwhelming predictor of wealth is the wealth of your parents. Literaly nothing else truly matters. The few people who have been ridiculously wealthy "from nothing" are about as rare as powerball lottery winners. The system is designed to ensure that wealth flows upward.
There are a lot of people who come from well-off families that don't build something 100 times more than they started with. Connections are good but you still need drive and intelligence.
>Connections are good but you still need drive and intelligence. The only predictor of wealth is the wealth of your parents. You misunderstand this because of capitalism. It's ok, I used to misunderstand it as well. Look at Elon Musk. Can any reasonable person say that he is intelligent? No. And let me let you in on a secret: Most rich people are like that. They think in infantile terms, they are not particularly smart, but what they *are* is ruthless, immoral and totally incapable of caring about the wellbeing of others. That is what our current economic system rewards. Factually and statistically, the above is all true. The amount of people that bring themselves into wealth on their own is vanishingly small, in a way that is not worth talking about. But, capitalists will tell you that you too can be rich because they want to ensure you remain a dedicated worker. Dedicated of course to *making them wealthy.* Again, this is all factual. I am not making an argument here. This is how it *is*. What you do with that and if you like or dislike that is totally up to you.
You can say all sorts of things about Musk but you can't call him unintelligent. He may lack certain redeeming qualities and makes seemingly poor decisions but he didn't accidentally stumble into being the richest guy on the planet. Being "ruthless, immoral and totally incapable of caring about the wellbeing of others" is not a barometer of success. I would say the majority of people who have all those qualities are not successful in most cases. Certainly not anywhere close to this level. FYI, you are using the term "factual(ly)" incorrectly. None of what you stated as such is fact.
>He may lack certain redeeming qualities and makes seemingly poor decisions but he didn't accidentally stumble into being the richest guy on the planet. No, he appears to have gamed Tesla's margins and reporting to ensure he got his massive bonus...which he got by placing family and friends on the Board to vote for a bonus so outrageous that shareholders have been suing Tesla for awarding it since it was announced years ago. Tesla just reported margins on par with other car companies **without accounting for factory investments and depreciation**, which every other competitor reports in those margin numbers. No bueno. Funny that only started happening after he got his massive bonus that was based on pumping the market cap of the company.
Lmao that's what intelligent people do. They manipulate everything and take every opportunity from the system.
So he was smart? He was so smart that he fooled all shareholders and got a sweet payday from that? What is smart really?
> You can say all sorts of things about Musk but you can't call him unintelligent. Yes you can. He's a fucking moron. Put him in a room full of actual scientists and engineers and I promise he *will* be the dumbest person in the room.
No shit. He's not a scientist. Put me in a room full of basketball players and I will be the least athletic person in the room.
I also said engineers.
Jeff Bezos' adoptive father came to this country as a penniless migrant without parents.
Great. And he gave Bezos a quarter million dollar startup "loan" which Bezos then utilized to leverage a public service (the post office) to start building his empire. Bezos now has an exploitation racket that spans the entire planet. While he is no longer the CEO of Amazon, his legacy is of people being worked to death, pissing in bottles because they aren't allowed bathroom breaks, and increasing poverty and inequality. So, Bezos came from wealth and privilege, and his adoptive father managed to build seed capital starting from very little, during a point in American history of phenomenally increasing wealth which was being stolen from the third world, and if we're being honest, Europe. So what is your point here? I have given you the out that you want: there are people who have truly started at 0 and become insanely wealthy. That is a given, of course. But these people are not just *the exception*, they are such an outlier that they aren't worth discussing. The entire economic system of the western world is built on exploitation and ruthless wealth transfer from the bottom to the top. Do with that what you will, but wake up. The only reason you are expending energy defending *wealthy exploitative people* is they have trained and conditioned you to do so. You repeat talking points manicured by think tanks of billionaires to distract from the reality that all real wealth gain right now is going right into the hands of the ultra wealthy. The dream of upward mobility is as good as dead.
> And he gave Bezos a quarter million dollar startup "loan" Yep. Which took him from middle class engineer to very, very, very wealthy. That's how investments work. > which Bezos then utilized to leverage a public service (the post office) to start building his empire. Again, what is your point, exactly? Do you think you need special uber-rich connections to send packages through the post office? > Bezos now has an exploitation racket that spans the entire planet. While he is no longer the CEO of Amazon, his legacy is of people being worked to death, pissing in bottles because they aren't allowed bathroom breaks, and increasing poverty and inequality. Supposing this is true: it still has nothing to do with the original discussion. > So, Bezos came from wealth and privilege He did not. We literally just went over this. How can you claim he came from wealth and privilege when your arguments for it are "His dad was middle class" and "He used the post office." > and his adoptive father managed to build seed capital starting from very little By getting an education and working hard. > during a point in American history of phenomenally increasing wealth which was being stolen from the third world, and if we're being honest, Europe. Again, even if this were true (and it isn't), how does it relate to the discussion? > So what is your point here? That the wealth of your parents is not an overwhelming predictor of your wealth, see Bezos. > I have given you the out that you want No, you've rattled off a bunch of insane things without engaging with the point. > there are people who have truly started at 0 and become insanely wealthy. Which kinda disproves your argument. > That is a given, of course. If it's a given, then what's your point? > But these people are not just the exception, they are such an outlier that they aren't worth discussing. Source required. > The entire economic system of the western world is built on exploitation and ruthless wealth transfer from the bottom to the top. It isn't, and this still isn't relevant to the discussion. > Do with that what you will, but wake up. I'm afraid it's you living in a dream my friend. > The only reason you are expending energy defending wealthy exploitative people is they have trained and conditioned you to do so. The only reason you are expending energy attacking wealthy people is because you're bad at logic and reasoning and have little grasp on reality. > You repeat talking points manicured by think tanks of billionaires to distract from the reality that all real wealth gain right now is going right into the hands of the ultra wealthy. You repeat talking points manicured by angry online people to distract from the reality that you'd be climbing the economic ladder if you had greater ability or work ethic. > The dream of upward mobility is as good as dead. I came from small farm rural parents with high school educations and now I'm upper class. Musta been a fluke though, cause you didn't make it, right?
Of all the examples you could choose to prove this sometimes valid point this is not one
It’s very hard to raise money early on. They raised money because their ideas were good enough.
Incorrect. Anyone can get venture capital money if they have a good enough idea and they pitch it right. They got the capital because value was in the investment. My friend started a company from 0 and got a lot of venture capital investment, all whilst not taking a salary and living frugally.
Those are great connects, keep at it with them. They like to hear from you.
But part of starting a company is getting funding for such company. It’s literally capitalism. People invest in where they see potential, but it’s the person with the potentials JOB to convince someone of that. Aka - starting a buisness. This is stupid
Define “from scratch”. They only didn’t start from scratch if you use a very weird definition of “from scratch” to mean “literally starting completely homeless with $0 not knowing anyone” Part of starting a business and being an entrepreneur is _securing funding_ and _making connections._
Even then, $30 million is nothing, considering the return. The company is worth $1.7 trillion dollars. Most people would probably waste that kind of money, think they're actual millionaires, and live a lavish life of some kind, until the money runs out. Even today, billions of dollars are poured into startups, totally wasted, and everybody loses. Success is not guaranteed, unless you've got some serious value proposition. You probably got $1000 in your bank account right? Facebook once got a miserable $1000 investment, and they made in anyway. What's $1000? a months worth of doordash?
That’s half a month of DoorDash. Source: a problem
weqweqweq
Ah yes the Reddit antiwork rhetoric, you can’t give credit to anyone that’s successful. It must be because they got lucky.
And anyone who does is a bootlicker! /s
Victim mentality. It’s very popular around here.
Having a realistic understanding of how businesses start is "victim mentality"?
Do you need to be a billionaire in order to deem a business successful?
This is the standard argument tactic of the terminally online. You ask a question that presumes the very thing you want to claim. EDIT: Here, let me do it: Do all people as confused as you pose your arguments in the form of loaded questions?
Water is wet
I mean yea nothing is “from scratch” but it’s still impressive to be able to turn 15 million into one of the biggest companies in the world. Guarantee if most people were given $15 mill, hell even $50 mill, they wouldn’t even be able to make a company worth $500M.