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Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

It is simple.

1. Some people take risk because they CAN and probably what they have seen from their family/parents (a.k.a rich/privilege). It is the cool thing to do.

2. Some people take risk because they WANT to regardless of their family situation (I am in this category). I just cannot see myself working in a job.

3. Some people take risk because they HAVE to. They have nothing else going on for them and doing their own thing is the only thing they can try. I am sure there are quite a few entrepreneurs in this category. They were desperate and just tried something of their own as the only last option.

So yea, entrepreneurship can never be generalized. We can argue on the percent breakdown b/w the 3 categories above. CAN, WANT, HAVE TO

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It looks like you have just generalized entrepreneurship.

There are also some simple facts about growing up poor. Even giving a poor person a lot of money does not put them in the same boat as someone who grew up around the mentality of "money as a tool" instead of "money as a scarce resource." There are biological differences [1] to growing up poor vs wealthy. Those differences are often compounded by poor nutrition which leads to poor health and other real impairments [2] including learning impairment and unwise decision making.

Within your three categories, 1 and 2 look awfully similar to my eyes. There is a luxury of time, knowledge and choice implied. 3 is a wildcard for great success or great failure often decided by luck. Great failure might mean homelessness or even death. Smartly, many people in category 3 opt for life and an underpaying 9-5 (or several of them) rather than rolling those dice.

[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/being-poor-not-only-affects-you... [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10946800/

I agree that being poor puts you at a disadvantage compared to people who are not poor. But I don't agree with the premise of this article. Just because it is harder doesn't mean you cannot have the risk taking ability in you. People who really want to be an entrepreneur figure out ways to defeat their disadvantages.

I just don't buy that you cannot be an entrepreneur because you were born poor. However, I agree that it makes a lot harder.

I agree. I also think discussions like this article assume that running a company is unique from other similar choices.

Is trying to become a singer/actor becoming an entrepreneur? Its fairly similar in terms of entering a winner-take-all field where you'll face a lot of adversity at the beginning.

Is switching careers to something your eduction is not in the same type of decision that an entrepreneur makes? Even if you are just switching to another 9-5?

Is someone who leaves a salary job to one that is paid mostly in sales commission an entrepreneur? Even if you are working for a company?

I don't think any of these situations are identical - but if you are trying to figure out "is this cultural or genetic" it seems worthy to think of your definition. After all, being a tech CEO is not something everyone wants to do.

And

4. For some people there simply isn't a risk.

The problem of discourses around the inevitability of some type success via hard work/talent, is the views it promotes against the ones deemed less successful or fortunate.

Each daily opportunity, for engaging with others, trying challenges and implementing entrepreneurial activities is a chance to move every so slightly in the direction of success. If you accumulate enough of these, and in the positive direction, you will achieve you success target.

However, each of these activities, offers the chance for a negative outcome, ever so slight in the negative direction. A random walk, just by the simple nature of life, can easily line up in front of you a series of negative outcomes that will push you too much into the opposite direction, or simply just to far from your intended target.

So you will run out of time, opportunities, capital, stamina, luck, space or creativity. In other words, and as somebody said: The multiple ways in which some are successful, are just one of many infinite ways in which other can be unsuccessful. You just have to encounter an enough number of negative events.

For a better society successful parties should promote true understanding of many reasons why one can be "successful".

"Life’s winners think success was earned even if it was down to luck"

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2210263-lifes-winners-t...

"Bucca’s team explored the subject by creating a version of President that involved almost no skill, and in which the influence of the starting conditions could be dialled up or down. They recruited about 1000 people through a website, Amazon Mechanical Turk, giving people $2.50 for taking part and a $5.00 bonus if they won.

Whoever was randomly picked to play the first card in round one of the game always had an advantage that meant they were most likely to win that round. In some versions, this starting advantage was further boosted: after the cards had been dealt for round two, the winner of round one was able to swap one or two of their weakest cards with the strongest ones of their opponent. In other versions, the opposite happened: the starting advantage was weakened by the previous loser getting good cards from the winner."

"At the end of their game, people were asked if it had been fair. Regardless of the conditions, winners were more likely to say yes than losers. Even when the winners benefited from receiving either one or two strong cards from their opponent, they were twice as likely to judge it a fair game as the losers. What’s more, in most versions of the game winners were more likely than losers to attribute success in the game to talent – even though the game required very little."

"It’s not just how the game is played, it’s whether you win or lose"

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaau1156

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