Stop Telling Me Trust-Fund Kids Are Financial Wizards

The conclusions that wealthy young adults have a greater chance of success seems too bloody obvious. They don't just benefit from the $100,000 seed loan (cough grant)... but education, stability their whole lives etc etc etc We should not assume that once family seed money has been provided, a billion dollar company automatically emerges. But that does not take away from the fact that entrepreneurship to a large degree hinges on class and wealth.

Millions of people have access to the kind of resources (or much more) a Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg had growing up, but very few have built successful companies. The article mentions that Warren Buffett's father was a congressman, which is true, but there are literally tens of thousands of children of federal representatives. None of them have done what Buffett has done.

I don't know why so many feel the need to reduce the effort, skill, and ingenuity of these founders and builders as if them building a Berkshire, Amazon, or Tesla was a given.

The only place I hear the “rags to riches billionaire” narrative is in articles like this one, using it as a strawman to attack. Signaling that these people came from wealthy backgrounds is a way to dogwhistle that they are the “bad” people, worthy of scorn instead of admiration.

Most people don’t care if these founders were poor or middle class or upper middle class or whatever. The fact that someone received a $100,000 loan from a family member isn’t the reason they built successful companies. It was a factor, but it’s ridiculous to suggest that it was the factor responsible for all of their success.

It’s equally ridiculous to suggest that the only thing holding other people back from becoming billionaires is the lack of a loan from their parents. Startup capital is easier to come by than ever before.

These articles often target extreme examples, and don't address actual issues.

All I'd want to see is a system where everyone at least gets a shot, right now. If both of your parents are abusive drug addicts and they don't want you to go to college since they're afraid that's going to make you uppity, those drug addicts have an insane ability to stop you from doing anything.

It's beyond stupid. You effectively need your parents permission to go to college in this country, via the way our financial aid system works. Why not just give everyone financial aid, this would also help out struggling middle-class families which on paper don't currently qualify.

I'm not too worried that Zuckerberg are whoever got $100,000 to start his business, I'm more worried about the poor teenager who doesn't talk to his parents, and has no real option to attend college until he's 24. Of course, occasionally you teach yourself how to program and by the time you get around to finish in college, you don't qualify for financial aid anyway since you're already making six figures, but I like to think of myself as the exception, not the rule.

It should be noted that the people comparing Ms. Holmes to Buffett, Gates, etc are journalists. This article refers to Inc. and Glamour and a local NBC affiliate (and the New York Times, albeit in a personal profile, not a news article). These are not "hard-hitting" articles, but puff pieces that were most likely paid for. Further, to the extent that such journalists have a bit of autonomy, they aren't very smart. They don't know any other billionaires, so these are the only comparisons possible. "Hard work" can apply to virtually anybody -- although spending your day in conference rooms and private jets and being driven around town certainly isn't the hardest of hard work, no matter how many hours you do it.

It's kind of ironic that a journalist can't recognize the rhetoric and myth-building of other journalists is almost entirely just b.s.