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> There aren't that many entrepreneurs who failed multiple times before succeeding at a business. If you look at the big businesses that dominate the US tech economy, they're all first time founders (Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft etc).

For this analysis to be complete you'd have to look at all companies, not an arbitrary selection of tech companies.

Furthermore, tech is unique (and so is the list of your companies) in that one couldn't have started a similar company before the ones you listed since modern tech literally had just begun.

A better example would be to look at the new generation of tech companies, such as OpenAI, if you want to focus on tech.

Finally, let's look at your companies:

Microsoft - was not Bill Gates' first company.

Amazon - It's true the name was the same, but the company pre and post 1998 (Amazon as a bookstore, and then Amazon as an ecommerce site, and then the development of what is known as AWS in the early 2000s) was fundamentally different. The only real similarity is the name.

Google - it's true Brin and Page started this company first, but they had effectively done all the work for "free" as part of their PhD (at Stanford, no less). Keeping up with the parent post analogy, there was not much risk here.

Apple - Similar to Amazon in that Apple as a name and company had continuity from now to its beginning, but Steve Jobs started Next which you could argue is the DNA of modern Apple (it merged back with the almost then defunct Apple), as well as Pixar.

> Amazon - It's true the name was the same, but the company pre and post 1998 (Amazon as a bookstore, and then Amazon as an ecommerce site, and then the development of what is known as AWS in the early 2000s) was fundamentally different. The only real similarity is the name.

> Apple - Similar to Amazon in that Apple as a name and company had continuity from now to its beginning, but Steve Jobs started Next which you could argue is the DNA of modern Apple (it merged back with the almost then defunct Apple), as well as Pixar.

These two do not really support your point. The grandparent said:

> There aren't that many entrepreneurs who failed multiple times before succeeding

Starting a successful company and then used that basis to branch out into another successful company does not disprove this point.

The point I was addressing was "Rich kids can afford many throws." in the grandparent. The parent post doesn't really change what the main point of the grandparent is, which is that rich people get more chances.

Gates had one other company that he founded at 17 before starting Microsoft at 20.

> There aren't that many entrepreneurs who failed multiple times before succeeding at a business.

That seems counter-intuitive. You are looking at incredibly large corporations that came full form in a few decades only, and I'd wager their founder succeeding at the first try might be part of the whole miracle. Companies that mildly succeed could come from less miraculous founders who needed a few more tries.

> Even rich kids go to VC

It's more on whether they can effort to "waste" a few years in a startup instead of trying to build a career in a more stable company.

They also don't need social branding: if you're trying to get a loan for your mortgage, working at IBM will help a lot compared to some random stealth startup.

It's the same reason you'll find more well-off kids trying to make it as actors. It's just a risk most poor kids won't take.

> due to the skills you developed and not mere luck

It doesn't have to be a dichotomy of one or another. Just don't publish a book to tell the world "look at me: just work hard enough and everything is possible"

Your average mortgage broker does not care about the name of the company on the check beyond conversation.

The Fannie Mae underwriting manual and software[1] they use makes no mention of company prestige, age, etc.

Simply, is there consistent pay stub history, do the bank accounts agree with the pay stub history, do the filed 1040s agree with job and bank account.

If you have a non-average mortgage broker that cares about the name, then you’re in an SVB-like situation and we’ve all seen how that played out.

1: https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/applications-technology/d...

I think you need to leave tech and VC money. VC’s are happy to throw money behind a bunch of smart college kids. Go try to go a different route and see all the doors shut. Also you don’t get to see all the people who don’t try their hand at entrepreneurship because the gamble is too great for them.

Yes, but the reason it's harder to get money for those sorts of businesses is because they're much less likely to generate large returns. The BBC couldn't / didn't want to find any tech entrepreneurs for this article (it's not like the UK doesn't have them), so they focus on people doing contracting or agency work. Of course it'll be tough to get investment in such a low margin and competitive business, VCs don't invest in tech outsourcing body shops either. There just isn't the possibility of large profits without product development.

Most businesses don't generate extraordinarily large returns. Successful tech companies are in the long tail. Where's the investment in the middle?

That exists but it goes by names we don't use much here like corporate paper, bonds, etc. Bigger than a bank loan but smaller than a (modern) VC round.

Except a huge amount of VC plays are basically just gambling on someone succeeding. They don’t care who. So you’ve got 1 success story for every 100 attempts. Sure that 1 generated outsized returns, but that doesn’t help the 100 that failed and lost time and money they could have gotten elsewhere.

Additionally, VC plays are often are parasitic endeavors that try to acquire monopoly positions by flooding the market to corner it (ie kill all competition) before raising prices (eg Uber prices raise to pretty close to taxis once the local taxis have been run out of business). If you prevented flooding the market as a tactic, the entrepreneurship model would change drastically. And that is something we used to try to prevent but for some reason we only did it once for the commodities market but let it continue unabashed everywhere else.

> A nice analogy but it doesn't work.

Your analogies don't refute his claims the way you think they do.

When you look at the FAANGs you're implicitly viewing from $$'s of the overall pie (top 99.99999%??) where as the parent comment is looking at it from they're just 5 founders amongst a sea of them (top 0.000001%?). Also, the founders of those companies aren't rags to riches they came from upper middle to upper class families.

His quoted analogy stands well and yours generally helps it.

This sounds like survivorship bias.

Rich kids have a golden parachute for a smoother fall than all the other kids. In addition, most rich kids belong to wealthy, well-connected parents who have already built a network for them. Middle-class to poor kids do not have these resources. However, that doesn't mean bootstrapping will not work. But it is harder for them than rich kids to build a multi-million business.