Comment by FloorEgg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FloorEgg | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy this.

I've been building startups for 15 years, volunteered at two accelerators, angel invested and networked a lot. Anecdotally, the majority of the founders that I have gotten to know and lasted more than a year (actually building product and selling it) are middle class, comfortable being frugal, and don't act privileged at all. The few that I know for a fact come from exceptional money do act privileged, kind of egocentric and wasted a lot of money on things that were performative.

I don't doubt lots of people from money go into entrepreneurship, and I'm sure some of them are successful, but from my experience privilege in this way often seems like a disadvantage. The vast majority of success I've seen comes from middle class.

It's anecdotal, but it's in the dozens.

It's very possible to bootstrap a successful business with very little resources. What matters is that you can empathize with people well and at scale and then solve problems pragmatically. Test your hypothesis constantly and don't be afraid of being wrong. Success doesn't come from money spent on good ideas, it comes from understanding other people's actual wants and then focusing on serving what is important and unsatisfied and creating practical economic feedback loops. It involves schlepping, hard work, sacrifice and resourcefulness. Timing matters a lot for startups (technology has developed enough to actually satisfy customers). Seed capital is optional if the founders learn how to build the company themselves. The vast majority of seed capital is wasted, and people from money waste more.

> The few that I know for a fact come from exceptional money

The article is not about people "coming from exceptional money". And I bet a lot of the people you are assuming are "middle class" aren't actually middle class.

There is a really bad habit in this country of assuming that you can have money, but unless you are "movie star rich" then you are middle class. That's not the case.

A lot of people work for a living but are not middle class (nor are they CEOs of fortune 500 companies).

More specifically a lot of the people reading HN right now likely fall into the category the researchers talk about. If you work in tech there is a very, very good chance you are not middle class. Just because you don't think of yourself as rich doesn't make you middle class.

It's something that being in an echo chamber of tech that people easily forget.

Someone can go look up a more precise definition, but if middle class were the middle 50th of household incomes, then if you have a household income (not individual, but combined AGI) that is > $100k you are not in the middle-class.[1] That doesn't mean you have multiple yachts, or act privileged or have exceptional money. It simple means (by that definition) you aren't middle class.

And before someone replies with it, "Cost Of Living" arguments do not change this substantially at all. Look at the AGI tables below, many people who think of themselves as middle class, are not. And if you're on HN reading that post, with a US job in tech, there is a good chance that includes you.

[1] Income in the United States - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States

Okay how about this then to cut through the ambiguity of terms.

1) Someone in their 20s who can live with their parent(s) while they get a startup off the ground has an advantage. It doesn't matter if they are below or above median household income so long as they can allocate majority of their time to it.

2) Someone who has capital and connections because their family is wealthy has other advantages, but many people coming from this situation also have other disadvantages, because they have often been shielded from discomfort and struggle and a lot of entrepreneurship is being tolerant (and even seeking) discomfort and struggle.

3) Someone in their 40s who has been frugal and saved by living within their means and has a spouse who works can allocate either part time or full time and be successful.

In the examples above I consider 1&3 as not coming from money but are the most common paths to entrepreneurial success that I have seen anecdotally. My 2nd example I would consider coming from money in the context of the article (a good concrete indicator is access to family seed capital), and this doesn't seem to me to be the most common path to success.

Rich and wealthy and middle class and poor aren't rigorously scientifically defined terms, the only one that is, is that the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a definition for poverty wages, but even that isn't simply a number.

People that live at the luxury don't necessarily have the money for it. To bring cars into the picture, an older model Mercedes Benz that's a falling apart money pit costs less than a brand new Honda Civic.

In my mind, the line for middle class is how long you can pay your bills at without working. If you've got enough money that the answer is a while, then you're rich. If you have so much that you're able to fund other people's dreams, then you're wealthy. If you're a short order cook at a diner that saved up enough money to have a go at running a food truck, you're scrupulous.

There's all sorts of caveats, and we can be super judgey about how other people are spending their money (and time) on bad/wrong/frivolous things, but I'd bet that most people here still have to work for a living and to me, that's middle class, even if the cars are flashier and vacations are to a different continent rather than a road trip and staying in motels, for those in the upper middle class.

> In my mind, the line for middle class is how long you can pay your bills at without working. If you've got enough money that the answer is a while, then you're rich. If you have so much that you're able to fund other people's dreams, then you're wealthy.

If someone has a $10M/yr salary, but chose to buy a mansion and their income can only cover their bills for a few months they are still "rich" (using your term). Or "upper income" / "not middle-class" using more standard terms. I mean it's great you have your own definition, but that doesn't really make it apply generally.

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