I think it depends where you set the limit between “self made” and “inherited”. I don’t think it’s black or white
Would Gates have made it if Mum wasn’t on the board of IBM? Would Bezos have made it without 200k from mum&dad ?
Would Gates have made it if Mum wasn’t on the board of IBM? Would Bezos have made it without 200k from mum&dad ?
Bezos was already the youngest Senior Vice President at DE Shaw before he started Amazon, so he wouldn't have any problem finding other investors. His mom had Bezos as a teenager, and his adoptive dad was a young Cuban refugee. His grandfather was rich though.
That’s a fair point to make in the abstract, but it’s absolutely, breath-takingly extraordinary to turn moderately well-off parents into a top-twenty global wealth position. I went to high school and university with many people considerably more privileged than either of those, and the challenge is generally in not mismanaging the assets too poorly so there’s enough to pass on to the next generation.
It's impossible to draw any firm conclusions from those lists because they aren't representative samples of wealthy people. They're a sample of wealthy people with public assets, and of course that's going to skew heavily towards people who founded large publically traded companies who live in countries with high degrees of financial transparency.