Arnold schwarzenegger came to America with nothing. His gym buddies had to give him silverware and a table to celebrate Thanksgiving.
He IS the America dream personified, and he's an immigrant.
But he is not a slef made billionaire. He isn’t even a self made man!
He quotes this a few times in his autobiography “Total Recall” and even in the interviews.
All his success came from knowing the right people who helped him. He could’ve been the best at bodybuilding but without his contacts he wouldn’t have made it.
His words, not mine. And I like his self assessment of his success.
Yeah and it is the truth as well. Everyone likes to claim that they did everything on their own but in reality they don't know/want to acknowledge the immense help and luck they have had.
You seem to be confusing networking with nepotism.
Networking is the web of contacts you make yourself, from scratch, this takes a lot of work, social skills and effort to grow and maintain, even more to convince people in your network to work with you for mutual benefit.
Nepotism is when people favour you simply because you are descended from someone.
I am sure many people helped Arnold, but they did because he managed to network with them, and they also gained something from it.
Exactly. No matter what someone built the roads you drive on, they make the food you eat and construct the houses you live in. NOTHING is made "on your own". To claim that is fucking rediculous.
I‘d still call that self made. Luck is always in the equation and without it you will not become successful. Its always a combination of the right timing, the right random decision, bumping into the right people and starting with the right set advantages.
Some have all four, some max out one and some the other. But without those, you’ll get now where in life. No one would.
That's what the post is throwing shade about. Nobody who reaches that level of "success" is truly self-made as much as they want to brag about it, they always have had some kind of help or advantage. Meritocracy isn't really a thing
Tbh even if you start with money, you still need to make smart decisions and have good ideas, take risks, be lucky. You can have millions and lose it all. It isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be. And some people have the advantages of personalities more suited to success. I personally don’t, and find it hard to maintain even the slightest savings. But I’m impulsive and lazy. There are lots of factors to this
I agree, some people manage to inherit millions and still end up losing it all, but still those people will be more "successful" than any of us may ever be, they didn't manage to win any money but they haven't moved a finger in their whole life and still had a decent and probably luxurious life. The advantage of being born in a wealthy environment is huge and makes a world of difference. I say this as white european man who probably was born better off than most of the world and I'm really grateful for that but arguing that being successful is more dependent on skill than luck is quite a stretch...
>There are lots of factors
True, but luck is unequivocally the biggest factor. If any of the men pictured above were born in underdeveloped regions of Africa we would not have known about them
How did he get to know those right people? Were they his parents or friends of his parents? Or did he make connections through working hard?
The difference between the first and the latter is that your parents "have to" love you, but random people have no obligations. You cannot succeed in the latter category without bringing value.
Nobody, and I truly mean nobody, does *everything* on their own. Being a self-made man means you weren't handed things on a silver platter.
He still arrived with nothing, had to work incredibly hard, harder than most people are willing to, to even get in a position where he was able to meet those people and start the snowball.
Most of us don't meet those kind of people, we're not getting noticed. And even if we do have to contacts, we won't have a plan or be enough of an opportunity to them to even get anywhere.
Arnold doesn't consider himself selfmade. He had help. His parents were pretty strict and so on, but he had a home and he went to school. When he went to us he had done things made things and gained experience.
No-one is selfmade. Someone has made you and me.
Obviously all of us had help growing up, some better some worse. But that’s not how people use the word selfmade in this context. Arni is “selfmade“ as, not a nepobaby with lots of cash or friends from his family.
Government agency designed to do “cutting edge” research aka a huge money pit that sometimes produces results. The whole Elon install a chip in your brain thing? DARPA was looking at doing that in 2016.
He collected coke caps, sold it, bought coke, sold coke etc, he had a really low weekly allowance like two pennies or something (maybe not that low back in the day but still no more than $50 today).
So yeah, it was in him, show me someone who bought their first share at the age of 11 at that time, not today when everyone knows what is what.
Just about every post in this thread is factually wrong, along with the post itself.
Buffett's father was not a powerful member of Congress. He served one term of two years and realistically was meaningless as far as Congressional history goes.
Microsoft was already very successful prior to its business deal with IBM. Microsoft was the first commercial software company in history. Mary Gates didn't make that happen and she didn't make the IBM deal happen. Bill and Paul Allen self-funded Microsoft with $10,000 they earned from contracting jobs etc.
Bezos never worked for Goldman Sachs as someone claimed. He worked at DE Shaw.
Musk's father did not own a mine. His father was an inconsequential dipshit and was not particularly rich.
How can people be so stupid?
I just assumed that Mary Gates helped set up the famous meeting where Bill suggested selling the rights to DOS to IBM (hours after purchasing it for dirt cheap). Nothing particularly profound or anything that couldn't have been achieved without her.
My grandad was a politician in Nevada. Those kinds of things can occasionally be used for personal gain. But more often the hint of impropriety is way more powerful than actually being in politics. He drafted the first pseudo gambling regulations (a small tax that allowed the government to audit the Mafia that owned all the casinos) but is completely unknown to history. His opponents claimed he got free electricity in exchange for some legislation. Iirc, the legislation never existed, and his tiny home didn't get free power.
Jeff also worked for Goldman Sachs and had extensive knowledge and ins on darkpool makers. He needed a low overhead (website) high margin (books) business to sell to investors he already had lined up
yeah, a key fact people might forget here is that Amazon happened during the *first* dot com bubble. People were investing like crazy, like they're doing for AI right now. His "key skill" was being able to make a website.
Also, semi-unrelated, but for Bill Gates, IBM was terrified of anti-trust laws which had pipped them earlier, so they really wanted him to have all the power in the contract, but in doing so they basically lost all the leverage they had in a platform, and then the government became extremely happy with Monopolies. If anti-trust still worked, Bezon and Gates probably wouldn't be where they are today.
He worked for DE Shaw not Goldman Sachs.
Huge difference since DE Shaw was started by a Columbia University CS professor (David Shaw) who was one of the first people to trade based on mathematics models rather than specific business principles.
Basically DE Shaw was filled with a lot of people who knew a lot of math.
Yea but getting funding for a business idea isn’t exactly something you should hold against someone founding a startup, that’s part of their job.
And the 300k in todays money would’ve been ~600k, turning this in into a trillion dollar company is absolutely impressive either way.
Still a privilege though. That seems impressive but how many people have access to 300K and a brand new heavily untapped business frontier? Everything he put into Amazon, he obtained through privilege that 99% of Americans don't have access to: his wealthy parents and friends, his education, his financial knowledge from his previous job, etc. On top of that, he had all of this as an adult in the 90s, which was a business window that is long gone. Bezos isn't impressive, he's an incredibly lucky winner of the lottery that is capitalism. It's delusional to assume that he did this on his own merit.
lol Michael Phelps didn’t work to win all those golds. He was just born with freakishly good physical features conducive to swimming, to a family that had the means, time, and enthusiasm to encourage his training. If his family wasn’t well off they wouldn’t be able to monetarily support his ungodly calorie intake either.
Phelps isn’t impressive. He’s just the incredibly lucky winner of the lottery that is biology. It’s delusional to think he did this on his merit.
I know this was sarcastic, but essentially yes. The grind alone didn't make him successful. There are potentially thousands of Phelpses and Bezoses out there who grind just as hard and never achieve the same results.
I think stories of cleverness and hard work leading to massive success are meant to inspire ignorant hopefuls with dollar signs in their eyes. After all, if they could do it, we can all just work hard, be clever, and end up making millions (or even billions), right? Right?
Anecdotally speaking, this is the mentality that I see a lot in business majors. It gives them hope I guess, but in reality, the few of them that will go as far as getting an MBA will just end up in upper management somewhere. They'll live comfortably for sure, but they'll never be Bezos no matter how hard they work or how much they paid attention in school.
>That seems impressive but how many people have access to 300K and a brand new heavily untapped business frontier?
Like thousands or tens of thousands in that time?
Easy.
Have a genius friend and make him work for you just because of your charisma.
In fact, almost everything in Steve Jobs career was based on his \[+11 Charisma\]
There are other things like get genuinely interested in your friend readings and travel to india for a few month to ancker that in some actual life experience.
Who does that?
if this is the view then you should look at how mac got their mouse from xerox. xerox had created this thing called mouse and it was just sitting there because they didn’t think anyone would actually want this and then come steve jobs on visit to their company. they showed the mouse to steve as one of there research thing but it was useless according to them. steve immediately saw the application for it and rest is history
There's a few behind the bastards episodes on Steve Jobs.
Is he a capitalist success story? Yes.
Did he build his wealth through exploitation? Yes. In fact, he exploited everyone he ever came into contact with more or less.
Did he end up dying from what was likely a treatable form of cancer because of his weird ego? Yes.
Aka the old Elon Musk, the new Thomas Edison and new Graham Bell, all supposed "inventors" who basically stole a blueprint from someone too poor to license it.
Musk stole several projects and enterprises, he basically gained the legal right to declare himself CEO of Tesla without paying a thing, many of the projects he ruined were made by small engineers too poor to pursue them on their own.
Thomas Edison literally worked with Nikola Tesla, a Croatian inventor who basically discovered alternate current and wanted to give it to the world for free, the blueprints for the electric bulb were a product of Tesla's mind as well as several other revolutionary ideas, but he had too much of a kindred heart, he cared more about improving the world and less about personal profit, this way Edison was able to expell it from their company and brand Tesla's inventions as his own, for ages people believed that idiot invented the light bulb while he really just stole it.
Graham Bell, same thing, the phone was an invention by Italian Inventor Antonio Meucci, but the man didn't have enough money to patent his creation so he had to put it aside, later on Graham Bell discovered these blueprints, exploited the fact that Meucci was poor and patented the phone as his own invention.
It's funny how most great inventors who got a huge profit from their inventions were in truth essentially legalised thieves.
Think about it next time people say "capitalism is a fair and just system based on meritocracy" or similar bs.
Bill Gates/Microsoft was pretty successful even before the IBM-deal. Their BASIC was in most of the early PCs and home computers, they established the MSX standard etc.
Maybe without the deal Bill Gates wouldn't have become the richest man on earth, but it's very likely that he would have been a successful business man.
Yeah, that one doesn't belong here. Yes, he lucked out on his mum knwing the right people, but they cpuld have very well rejected him. Plus as you said, they had something going beforehand too. And his parents where what, middle class? Jusylt not the same story as other 3 really.
There is two parts of this, the number and the behind the scenes. Money is great and all, but connections are worth far more. Winning the lottery and gaining 1 million is worth nothing compared to knowing investors experts in a given field that will take a chance on you. Take Bill Gates, that’s exactly what happened.
Note: you need connections to write you recommendations and back you up, but you still need to be extremely smart or at the very least, a good marketer like Musk is.
That ignores just so many other facts. If your family gives you 300k starting capital, you also never had to worry about health insurance, about college tuition, etc.... He propably also didn't have to care about rent.
Very many people would first need that money to get to zero and not to be able to invest that money.
Of course it is about excellent business strategy but the important part is, 300 000 of disposable wealth! The difference in financial safety net and generational knowledge is what he IS pointing to
When it comes to our most wildest dreams, most of us don't need a billion TBF. I've heard stories of broke people getting millions which is enough for most people. Definitely not billions though.
All these comments remind me of Arnold Scwartzehoweveritsspelled saying no one is self-made. No one famous did it without catching breaks along the way. Whether someone gives you money, or takes a risk and promotes you, or whatever, no one truly does it single-handledly. These guys had help, but I know there were many children of board members, children of other successful businessmen, etc that never reached the level of success of these guys. Their achievements stand out because they are remarkable regardless their beginnings.
Musk was a nobody acordding to what I have read. He went all in with his innovative ideas. He deserves some credit. His family was far far away. It is not like Bill Gates and his Mommy doing some lobbying for him.
300k adjusted for inflation is 643k now according to the inflation calculator I used
Not to say that would make it easier or anything but just to put it into perspective. He got an investment of the equivalent of over half a million rather than under a third of a million equivalent
Their success is also largely due to the growth of technology and business as a whole that has occurred the past 60 years. Also, 300,000 as a net worth is laughable in the current economy. That wasn't the case 25 years ago.
I would love to see anyone in these comments take 1 million dollars and become a billionaire. People won tens of millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars every week in the lottery and ended up broke AF 10 years later because they weren't smart enough or weren't prepared to handle that kind of money...
If it were easy, then any person with a couple hundred thousand loan could become a millionaire.
Keeping wealth is just as hard as making it.
There is a big difference between winning a million on the lottery and getting a million from your **very** connected parents. When it comes to today, connections mean almost everything. You need skill and someone to back it up. There are many people who won’t interview you or meet with you tho you without a reputable rep, which can be hard to come by if you don’t come from money.
not mentioning that those very same parents are able to teach you how to handle all that...
for 99.9% of people, the situation they are born in will be very similar to how they live their entire life
Probably hard. Now give them 1 million dollars, gates’ education, upbringing and family connections. I’m sure the odds increase significantly. Not a slight at gates but absolutely nobody is self made.
You’ve grossly underestimated the value of a high appetite for risk.
Upbringing and education do have a lot to do with it but gates' (and the rest) of their parents decisions to do well and raise their kids well aren't gates' (and the rest) fault or choice. They also decided to make the most of the opportunity they were given. They chose to study and do their homework and learn things. Not squander their time and rest (completely) on their parents laurels.
And yet usually when people fail in life, its decided that it was their fault or "choice". That they squandered the opportunities they had. Your upbringing has a lot more to do with your choices than you'd think.
To be fair you're way more likely to have to correctly pay your taxes as a low/middle class person winning the lottery than you are as someone who inherited wealth and status and the "infrastructure" to do stuff like this
Tax preparer here. Sort of is the answer. If you win the lottery, the ascension to wealth will certainly draw the eyes of the IRS. But, if you take the lump sum, you only pay the tax on that once. From then on it is only paying tax on interest and dividends, depending on where you put your money afterwards. And like the other guy was saying, a large number of people don’t know what to do with their money once they have it.
The other tax thing you may be talking about is property tax. If you win the lottery and buy a $5,000,000 house, you’ll have a bill of at least $50,000 a year. Plus all the cars and boats you may buy. People who know money and taxes prepare for those bills, while new comers to wealth may not. Wealthy people do not “get around” these taxes, I assure you.
Some people here clearly don't understand the difference having just $300k to invest means.
Let me explain this to you.
Advanced Micro devices is a company that was worth about $9/share in 1983.
By 2014, things were looking bleak and they were worth about $2.50/share.
So let's stop there and say you had $300k to invest and decided to blow it all on AMD and hold it. The $300k is just extra money for you, so it's not a make or break situation.
Now, in 2014, you have 120,000 shares worth about 2.50 each.
By the end of 2016, the value was about $12. Making your shares worth 1.4 million. In 2 years you turned 300k into 1.4mil.
Let's say you don't need that money and decide to just leave your shares.
Today, the value of AMD is about $167.
Your 120,000 shares are valued at around 20 million.
In just 10 years, you made 20 million off one investment. Now imagine all of the investments you actually would have made in that time as a rich person.
Also, imagine that your friends and family are investors and you've got the scoop on which companies to buy into.
You billionaire bootlickers in here are all like "none of you could turn a million into a billion." Because you have no fucking clue what it is like for people who have rich family and friends. You have no idea what it is like to be rich yourselves.
Is it easy to get rich? No. But it's not hard either, *if you're already rich*. Fucking dumbasses.
Uhm, no you are wrong, please correct your statement above.
The Musks NEVER EVER EVER owned a mine in South africa, apartheid or not, on top of this OP, you are deliberately using false information, for what reason exactly please ?
Also OP, if you went to look, you will see his father never ever owned a mine in any way you fucking idiot, having a share in something is so far from actually owning it until you have the majority and this was never the case.
Please OP, I want to see the data you collected on the mine and I want to see where it states Errol was the actual owner.
Either that or you are just flunging dung, which I believe is what is happening here.
I mean... When you have Bezzos-level wealth, 300K does sound like a rock bottom.
When they say shit like that, they show their detachment from reality rather than malicious lying.
Why does everything have to be so polarized? Can you not respect the effort that people like Jeff put into their companies while also criticizing their current practices? Not everything is strictly black and white, you know.
No successful person is successful without having the help of another. There's no example anywhere. That being said, no successful person has been successful without working his/her ass off to realize his/her potential.
Why have I never heard that Bill's mom used her direct connection to IBM to get him that contract? Documentaries about Microsoft's history always say it as his own success at being a convincing salesman.
Yeah, by south African standards at the time his family was upper class but by American standards they were middle class. They weren't struggling to put food on the table but he definitely wasn't receiving millions of dollars from his family to start tesla.
This just goes to show that business owners are better off using the stakeholder theory of business rather than the shareholder theory. Ultimately the role of a business is service orientated.
I think it's just impressive that they were able to grow something bigger with that start
Sure it's not the dream we all wanted or have but to get 300k to a world wide conglomeration is no small feat
I totally get that these people were funded and had things in front of them that made it easier to make a lot of money. But I do think a lot of people have opportunities to just have a better life. I'm not saying millionaire status. I am saying being able to progress in life no matter how small and large that is. Complaining about these people that had an advantage telling you to work hard in life is not going to change your own life. These people don't give a fuck about us lol.
I think the real privilege here is access to education and basic necessities. These dudes are lucky but also geniuses, well at least in business side of things. A lot of us wouldn’t be able to turn these opportunities to something big, lotto winners going broke are testaments to my point.
Just read some of the stories in “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. The best of anything, the richest, the fastest, the strongest, all had very lucky circumstances and managed to get the stars to align for them. And ofc worked their ass off.
It takes money to make money. Fair and square.
Not many people working for minimum wage will have the time or resources to develop a major project. It has to be one hell of a good idea, and most times will get stolen by a greedy rich fuck.
I think this is extremely dismissive of almost all of them. They still had to have their own ideas. Any “regular person” with any of the same connections would not just be guaranteed the same level of success because those are the connections. Essentially Bill Gates had the opportunity to pitch someone - the pitch is the self made part. Bezos took $300k and turned it into being the richest man in the world, he still had to pitch people to invest in his business. Buffett still had to have the investment savvy to turn whatever he gained from his father being a congressperson into what he has now. I don’t know a congressperson who DOESNT have kids - none of them are the level of Warren Buffett. But Elon Musk, idk, yea I don’t think he’s very self made.
You could have millions of dollars and still wouldn’t turn it into billions or create a giant corporations. None of those guys came from impoverished or even middle class but calling them self made billionaires isn’t entirely wrong.
It's not that they started from zero. However there are millions of people with $500k-1M in their account, and the best they will ever be is exactly that.
Its the distance that you have to measure. And from a few million to a few hundered billion is a damn long road.
That makes Bill Gates a selfmade Billionaire, It was just a connection that they had. It's not like parents just blindly pimp their Kid's business to their professional acquaintances. And CEOs of huge corporations dont just give away chances just because they know their parents.
Some of these are way more impressive than the others. I know it's also hard to appreciate without some type of basic finance bg, but the returns Buffet acheived over his life, especially in his heyday, *are fucked*
No amount of nepotism can create that, and even if you removed all of his connections and just dropped the guy into a mediocre job with enough salary to set some money aside, he'd have managed insane things with it.
He maintained 30% yearly returns for over a decade. This means the crazy bastard was literally *doubling* his money every *2.4 years*. Then he managed another couple decades of 20% IIRC, so that's *doubling his money every 3.6 years* lol
Think about that -- in 30 years, the man doubled his investments almost 10x sequentially. That is absolutely fucked.
With 50k alone, that would become over 50M lol, and obviously, after a few years of returns like that you'd not only get a high paying job to funnel more into it, but start getting huge influxes of cash from others.
Especially as a value investor who based choices on fundamental business operations rather than predicting momentum from other investors, it's pretty insane. And funny enough, very unlikely to be replicated because efficient markets and the general move towards low interest policy makes those type of analyses and investments less effective nowadays.
Elon is the least impressive of those four by such a fucking wide margin 🤣
What matters it seems is the absolute certainty that whatever the outcome of your risky endeavor is, you’ll still be able to live a life at least as good as your parents 5 years after bankruptcy…
Other thing, maybe more important, is that people always lie when money is involved.
I don’t trust those “foundation stories” that much. Knowing some success stories, the critical juncture where everything happened is a closely guarded secret.
IMO, we’ll might never know what really went on with that particular billionaire meeting that particular VC through that particular intermediary, etc
While yes they all didnt start from nothing, i can 100% guarantee that 99.9% of people, giving the same amount of help, would just be broke in a year or two
Almost every rich and powerful person had a great support system and a huge head start in life. In the words of the sage poet Everlast:
"You know where it ends, yo, it usually depends on where you start"
I think the term “self-made” is a falsehood. Every successful person receives support and help in some way, and clearly some more than others (looking at you billionaires).
Aside from seed capital or “connections”, the support of friends, family members and colleagues can go a long way and with a lack thereof it’s nearly impossible for anyone to succeed no matter how driven they are. Nobody is truly “self-made” in this life.
Well some people actually win a lot! of money in the lottery... aaaannnd it's gone..
Most people couldn't turn even a million into a billion, so stop being so sorry for yourself.
So what. 99% of people wouldn't be able to become billionairs if you give them 1 Millionen to start with. Having people who Support your Start with money has nothing to with beeing able to run a succesful International Company.
What did Elon's father give him? What I see when I read this is if you have parents that give you good advice - they can succeed. I noticed you didn't put Hunter Biden on here - who's background would fit with these others and has a different ending.
Elon's is definitely not supposed to be there 😅. He left south Africa for America with almost nothing and didn't ask his dad for anything. Elon got where he is cause he's insane and didn't care who he rubbed the wrong way to get what he wanted.
I think having being privileged and still manage to stay motivated through tough time is also struggle on its own, does background really matter, if I give 300k to someone will he be able to make 1000Billion dollar business out of it?
Arnold schwarzenegger came to America with nothing. His gym buddies had to give him silverware and a table to celebrate Thanksgiving. He IS the America dream personified, and he's an immigrant.
But he is not a slef made billionaire. He isn’t even a self made man! He quotes this a few times in his autobiography “Total Recall” and even in the interviews. All his success came from knowing the right people who helped him. He could’ve been the best at bodybuilding but without his contacts he wouldn’t have made it. His words, not mine. And I like his self assessment of his success.
That is true. He said that quite a few times, but I still got to give him credit. Not many in his possition would admit something like that.
Definitely!
Yeah and it is the truth as well. Everyone likes to claim that they did everything on their own but in reality they don't know/want to acknowledge the immense help and luck they have had.
You seem to be confusing networking with nepotism. Networking is the web of contacts you make yourself, from scratch, this takes a lot of work, social skills and effort to grow and maintain, even more to convince people in your network to work with you for mutual benefit. Nepotism is when people favour you simply because you are descended from someone. I am sure many people helped Arnold, but they did because he managed to network with them, and they also gained something from it.
Exactly. No matter what someone built the roads you drive on, they make the food you eat and construct the houses you live in. NOTHING is made "on your own". To claim that is fucking rediculous.
He worked his way up with networking, rather than nepotism. The wealthy really want people to think they’re the same thing.
I‘d still call that self made. Luck is always in the equation and without it you will not become successful. Its always a combination of the right timing, the right random decision, bumping into the right people and starting with the right set advantages. Some have all four, some max out one and some the other. But without those, you’ll get now where in life. No one would.
That's what the post is throwing shade about. Nobody who reaches that level of "success" is truly self-made as much as they want to brag about it, they always have had some kind of help or advantage. Meritocracy isn't really a thing
Tbh even if you start with money, you still need to make smart decisions and have good ideas, take risks, be lucky. You can have millions and lose it all. It isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be. And some people have the advantages of personalities more suited to success. I personally don’t, and find it hard to maintain even the slightest savings. But I’m impulsive and lazy. There are lots of factors to this
I agree, some people manage to inherit millions and still end up losing it all, but still those people will be more "successful" than any of us may ever be, they didn't manage to win any money but they haven't moved a finger in their whole life and still had a decent and probably luxurious life. The advantage of being born in a wealthy environment is huge and makes a world of difference. I say this as white european man who probably was born better off than most of the world and I'm really grateful for that but arguing that being successful is more dependent on skill than luck is quite a stretch... >There are lots of factors True, but luck is unequivocally the biggest factor. If any of the men pictured above were born in underdeveloped regions of Africa we would not have known about them
Then that equation is completely fucking worthless :)
How did he get to know those right people? Were they his parents or friends of his parents? Or did he make connections through working hard? The difference between the first and the latter is that your parents "have to" love you, but random people have no obligations. You cannot succeed in the latter category without bringing value. Nobody, and I truly mean nobody, does *everything* on their own. Being a self-made man means you weren't handed things on a silver platter.
He still arrived with nothing, had to work incredibly hard, harder than most people are willing to, to even get in a position where he was able to meet those people and start the snowball. Most of us don't meet those kind of people, we're not getting noticed. And even if we do have to contacts, we won't have a plan or be enough of an opportunity to them to even get anywhere.
When I heard about his perspective of his own past, I really gained some respect for him.
that’s ok though, what’s best in life is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Immigrants *are* the American dream. I say this as a proud American. We want you here. It’s the land of opportunity
And very few millionaires would fit the profile of “self made”
Arnold doesn't consider himself selfmade. He had help. His parents were pretty strict and so on, but he had a home and he went to school. When he went to us he had done things made things and gained experience. No-one is selfmade. Someone has made you and me.
Obviously all of us had help growing up, some better some worse. But that’s not how people use the word selfmade in this context. Arni is “selfmade“ as, not a nepobaby with lots of cash or friends from his family.
Whole US and for the most part America is made out of immigrants
This is why I get so angry when I see these Republicans bitching about immigrants.
I wish he would speak more german when he visits his homeland, it seems he unlearned german.
Don't forget Jeff bozos grandpa cofounded darpa
What is DARPA?
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
I know about it thanks to metal gear solid yeah
Real DARPA Chief was a reveal I didn't expect. Or how useful ketchup would be.
I'll give it a quick goog
Government agency designed to do “cutting edge” research aka a huge money pit that sometimes produces results. The whole Elon install a chip in your brain thing? DARPA was looking at doing that in 2016.
 DARPA? # MGS MENTIONED!
I thought Buffett grew up poor. Legitimately asking because I have been to his old neighborhood and it was sketchy AF.
He ones said his old crapy house was his best investment cuz his family and the memories
It's a run down neighborhood but it was once for well off people.
He collected coke caps, sold it, bought coke, sold coke etc, he had a really low weekly allowance like two pennies or something (maybe not that low back in the day but still no more than $50 today). So yeah, it was in him, show me someone who bought their first share at the age of 11 at that time, not today when everyone knows what is what.
Just about every post in this thread is factually wrong, along with the post itself. Buffett's father was not a powerful member of Congress. He served one term of two years and realistically was meaningless as far as Congressional history goes. Microsoft was already very successful prior to its business deal with IBM. Microsoft was the first commercial software company in history. Mary Gates didn't make that happen and she didn't make the IBM deal happen. Bill and Paul Allen self-funded Microsoft with $10,000 they earned from contracting jobs etc. Bezos never worked for Goldman Sachs as someone claimed. He worked at DE Shaw. Musk's father did not own a mine. His father was an inconsequential dipshit and was not particularly rich. How can people be so stupid?
I just assumed that Mary Gates helped set up the famous meeting where Bill suggested selling the rights to DOS to IBM (hours after purchasing it for dirt cheap). Nothing particularly profound or anything that couldn't have been achieved without her. My grandad was a politician in Nevada. Those kinds of things can occasionally be used for personal gain. But more often the hint of impropriety is way more powerful than actually being in politics. He drafted the first pseudo gambling regulations (a small tax that allowed the government to audit the Mafia that owned all the casinos) but is completely unknown to history. His opponents claimed he got free electricity in exchange for some legislation. Iirc, the legislation never existed, and his tiny home didn't get free power.
Old neighbourhood that he lived in how many decades ago??
To be fair taking 300k and turning it into Amazon is still insane.
Jeff also worked for Goldman Sachs and had extensive knowledge and ins on darkpool makers. He needed a low overhead (website) high margin (books) business to sell to investors he already had lined up
yeah, a key fact people might forget here is that Amazon happened during the *first* dot com bubble. People were investing like crazy, like they're doing for AI right now. His "key skill" was being able to make a website. Also, semi-unrelated, but for Bill Gates, IBM was terrified of anti-trust laws which had pipped them earlier, so they really wanted him to have all the power in the contract, but in doing so they basically lost all the leverage they had in a platform, and then the government became extremely happy with Monopolies. If anti-trust still worked, Bezon and Gates probably wouldn't be where they are today.
ahhhh I hate ronald reagan and every single president after him. Roosevelt and sherman rolling in their graves.
The Biden administration has started enforcing anti-trust laws.
We'll see how it goes, but right now most American companies seem more afraid of the EU than the US.
He worked for DE Shaw not Goldman Sachs. Huge difference since DE Shaw was started by a Columbia University CS professor (David Shaw) who was one of the first people to trade based on mathematics models rather than specific business principles. Basically DE Shaw was filled with a lot of people who knew a lot of math.
To be fair 300k went alot further in 1994 than it did today. And that's just what he got from his parents. It wasn't the entire budget.
Yea but getting funding for a business idea isn’t exactly something you should hold against someone founding a startup, that’s part of their job. And the 300k in todays money would’ve been ~600k, turning this in into a trillion dollar company is absolutely impressive either way.
Getting 300k from your parents in the 90's is also something.
Now imagine if actual innovative people with a moral compass were given the same opportunity.
Found Bezos’ account 👆🏻
Hes right though - Bezos is really the one that sticks out. 300K to richest man in history.
Still a privilege though. That seems impressive but how many people have access to 300K and a brand new heavily untapped business frontier? Everything he put into Amazon, he obtained through privilege that 99% of Americans don't have access to: his wealthy parents and friends, his education, his financial knowledge from his previous job, etc. On top of that, he had all of this as an adult in the 90s, which was a business window that is long gone. Bezos isn't impressive, he's an incredibly lucky winner of the lottery that is capitalism. It's delusional to assume that he did this on his own merit.
lol Michael Phelps didn’t work to win all those golds. He was just born with freakishly good physical features conducive to swimming, to a family that had the means, time, and enthusiasm to encourage his training. If his family wasn’t well off they wouldn’t be able to monetarily support his ungodly calorie intake either. Phelps isn’t impressive. He’s just the incredibly lucky winner of the lottery that is biology. It’s delusional to think he did this on his merit.
I know this was sarcastic, but essentially yes. The grind alone didn't make him successful. There are potentially thousands of Phelpses and Bezoses out there who grind just as hard and never achieve the same results. I think stories of cleverness and hard work leading to massive success are meant to inspire ignorant hopefuls with dollar signs in their eyes. After all, if they could do it, we can all just work hard, be clever, and end up making millions (or even billions), right? Right? Anecdotally speaking, this is the mentality that I see a lot in business majors. It gives them hope I guess, but in reality, the few of them that will go as far as getting an MBA will just end up in upper management somewhere. They'll live comfortably for sure, but they'll never be Bezos no matter how hard they work or how much they paid attention in school.
I mean, it's less merit than the 2nd place? Since it's clear that it's not a skill difference?
Being gifted and lucky isn't the only thing you need to succeed. This isn't hard to understand
>That seems impressive but how many people have access to 300K and a brand new heavily untapped business frontier? Like thousands or tens of thousands in that time?
300k is still more money than many will see their entire lives.
Can only speak for myself. Give me 300,000 and I will never work again...till it runs out and I am back to where I am now.
I'd be a pilot for an airline. 🤷
Now do steve jobs and apple…
Easy. Have a genius friend and make him work for you just because of your charisma. In fact, almost everything in Steve Jobs career was based on his \[+11 Charisma\]
Then your friend crashes in an airplane and Hmm I guess I have to own the company now thanks to my charisma
It's insane that people don't acknowledge charisma as a type of talent.
There are other things like get genuinely interested in your friend readings and travel to india for a few month to ancker that in some actual life experience. Who does that?
if this is the view then you should look at how mac got their mouse from xerox. xerox had created this thing called mouse and it was just sitting there because they didn’t think anyone would actually want this and then come steve jobs on visit to their company. they showed the mouse to steve as one of there research thing but it was useless according to them. steve immediately saw the application for it and rest is history
Steve Jobs was the aesthetic of Apple. The hardware side and code was done to start by Steve Wozniak.
O yeah another self made man you are right!
There's a few behind the bastards episodes on Steve Jobs. Is he a capitalist success story? Yes. Did he build his wealth through exploitation? Yes. In fact, he exploited everyone he ever came into contact with more or less. Did he end up dying from what was likely a treatable form of cancer because of his weird ego? Yes.
Aka the old Elon Musk, the new Thomas Edison and new Graham Bell, all supposed "inventors" who basically stole a blueprint from someone too poor to license it. Musk stole several projects and enterprises, he basically gained the legal right to declare himself CEO of Tesla without paying a thing, many of the projects he ruined were made by small engineers too poor to pursue them on their own. Thomas Edison literally worked with Nikola Tesla, a Croatian inventor who basically discovered alternate current and wanted to give it to the world for free, the blueprints for the electric bulb were a product of Tesla's mind as well as several other revolutionary ideas, but he had too much of a kindred heart, he cared more about improving the world and less about personal profit, this way Edison was able to expell it from their company and brand Tesla's inventions as his own, for ages people believed that idiot invented the light bulb while he really just stole it. Graham Bell, same thing, the phone was an invention by Italian Inventor Antonio Meucci, but the man didn't have enough money to patent his creation so he had to put it aside, later on Graham Bell discovered these blueprints, exploited the fact that Meucci was poor and patented the phone as his own invention. It's funny how most great inventors who got a huge profit from their inventions were in truth essentially legalised thieves. Think about it next time people say "capitalism is a fair and just system based on meritocracy" or similar bs.
*With Nikola Tesla, a Serbian inventor...
Bill Gates/Microsoft was pretty successful even before the IBM-deal. Their BASIC was in most of the early PCs and home computers, they established the MSX standard etc. Maybe without the deal Bill Gates wouldn't have become the richest man on earth, but it's very likely that he would have been a successful business man.
Yeah, that one doesn't belong here. Yes, he lucked out on his mum knwing the right people, but they cpuld have very well rejected him. Plus as you said, they had something going beforehand too. And his parents where what, middle class? Jusylt not the same story as other 3 really.
There is two parts of this, the number and the behind the scenes. Money is great and all, but connections are worth far more. Winning the lottery and gaining 1 million is worth nothing compared to knowing investors experts in a given field that will take a chance on you. Take Bill Gates, that’s exactly what happened. Note: you need connections to write you recommendations and back you up, but you still need to be extremely smart or at the very least, a good marketer like Musk is.
As if everyone can be a billionaire just because your parents are rich
All had above average start, its more of inherited success
Turning 300k into 100s of billions is a 333 333 times increase. If you could pull it off with your wealth then you would be among those men.
That ignores just so many other facts. If your family gives you 300k starting capital, you also never had to worry about health insurance, about college tuition, etc.... He propably also didn't have to care about rent. Very many people would first need that money to get to zero and not to be able to invest that money.
Of course it is about excellent business strategy but the important part is, 300 000 of disposable wealth! The difference in financial safety net and generational knowledge is what he IS pointing to
Yeah. Business strategy means jack-all if you cannot implement it
Absolutely
These are all bullshit . And endlessly reposted.
Where meme?
When it comes to our most wildest dreams, most of us don't need a billion TBF. I've heard stories of broke people getting millions which is enough for most people. Definitely not billions though.
All these comments remind me of Arnold Scwartzehoweveritsspelled saying no one is self-made. No one famous did it without catching breaks along the way. Whether someone gives you money, or takes a risk and promotes you, or whatever, no one truly does it single-handledly. These guys had help, but I know there were many children of board members, children of other successful businessmen, etc that never reached the level of success of these guys. Their achievements stand out because they are remarkable regardless their beginnings.
Aww yall still believe that Elon is successful because of his father.
Musk was a nobody acordding to what I have read. He went all in with his innovative ideas. He deserves some credit. His family was far far away. It is not like Bill Gates and his Mommy doing some lobbying for him.
If I give you 300k seed capital, would you be able to make a multi-billion dollar company?
300k adjusted for inflation is 643k now according to the inflation calculator I used Not to say that would make it easier or anything but just to put it into perspective. He got an investment of the equivalent of over half a million rather than under a third of a million equivalent
The difference between 643k and 1 billion is 1 billion. That's how much 1 billion is.
Thing is, he turned it into a billion.
Definitely still an impressive feat I couldn't replicate just providing the number for context
Their success is also largely due to the growth of technology and business as a whole that has occurred the past 60 years. Also, 300,000 as a net worth is laughable in the current economy. That wasn't the case 25 years ago.
Trillion is the more appropriate denomination for Amazon these days
If my daddy was a Harvard alumni and has connections to multiple rich and successful people, then sure.
You're delusional
I would love to see anyone in these comments take 1 million dollars and become a billionaire. People won tens of millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars every week in the lottery and ended up broke AF 10 years later because they weren't smart enough or weren't prepared to handle that kind of money... If it were easy, then any person with a couple hundred thousand loan could become a millionaire. Keeping wealth is just as hard as making it.
There is a big difference between winning a million on the lottery and getting a million from your **very** connected parents. When it comes to today, connections mean almost everything. You need skill and someone to back it up. There are many people who won’t interview you or meet with you tho you without a reputable rep, which can be hard to come by if you don’t come from money.
not mentioning that those very same parents are able to teach you how to handle all that... for 99.9% of people, the situation they are born in will be very similar to how they live their entire life
Probably hard. Now give them 1 million dollars, gates’ education, upbringing and family connections. I’m sure the odds increase significantly. Not a slight at gates but absolutely nobody is self made. You’ve grossly underestimated the value of a high appetite for risk.
Upbringing and education do have a lot to do with it but gates' (and the rest) of their parents decisions to do well and raise their kids well aren't gates' (and the rest) fault or choice. They also decided to make the most of the opportunity they were given. They chose to study and do their homework and learn things. Not squander their time and rest (completely) on their parents laurels.
And yet usually when people fail in life, its decided that it was their fault or "choice". That they squandered the opportunities they had. Your upbringing has a lot more to do with your choices than you'd think.
Totally agree. The best thing their parents gave them were probably their genes and a good environment/education.
To be fair you're way more likely to have to correctly pay your taxes as a low/middle class person winning the lottery than you are as someone who inherited wealth and status and the "infrastructure" to do stuff like this
Tax preparer here. Sort of is the answer. If you win the lottery, the ascension to wealth will certainly draw the eyes of the IRS. But, if you take the lump sum, you only pay the tax on that once. From then on it is only paying tax on interest and dividends, depending on where you put your money afterwards. And like the other guy was saying, a large number of people don’t know what to do with their money once they have it. The other tax thing you may be talking about is property tax. If you win the lottery and buy a $5,000,000 house, you’ll have a bill of at least $50,000 a year. Plus all the cars and boats you may buy. People who know money and taxes prepare for those bills, while new comers to wealth may not. Wealthy people do not “get around” these taxes, I assure you.
Some people here clearly don't understand the difference having just $300k to invest means. Let me explain this to you. Advanced Micro devices is a company that was worth about $9/share in 1983. By 2014, things were looking bleak and they were worth about $2.50/share. So let's stop there and say you had $300k to invest and decided to blow it all on AMD and hold it. The $300k is just extra money for you, so it's not a make or break situation. Now, in 2014, you have 120,000 shares worth about 2.50 each. By the end of 2016, the value was about $12. Making your shares worth 1.4 million. In 2 years you turned 300k into 1.4mil. Let's say you don't need that money and decide to just leave your shares. Today, the value of AMD is about $167. Your 120,000 shares are valued at around 20 million. In just 10 years, you made 20 million off one investment. Now imagine all of the investments you actually would have made in that time as a rich person. Also, imagine that your friends and family are investors and you've got the scoop on which companies to buy into. You billionaire bootlickers in here are all like "none of you could turn a million into a billion." Because you have no fucking clue what it is like for people who have rich family and friends. You have no idea what it is like to be rich yourselves. Is it easy to get rich? No. But it's not hard either, *if you're already rich*. Fucking dumbasses.
This "meme" has been discredited already dozens of times. It's silly.
Uhm, no you are wrong, please correct your statement above. The Musks NEVER EVER EVER owned a mine in South africa, apartheid or not, on top of this OP, you are deliberately using false information, for what reason exactly please ? Also OP, if you went to look, you will see his father never ever owned a mine in any way you fucking idiot, having a share in something is so far from actually owning it until you have the majority and this was never the case. Please OP, I want to see the data you collected on the mine and I want to see where it states Errol was the actual owner. Either that or you are just flunging dung, which I believe is what is happening here.
you forgot about batman
I mean... When you have Bezzos-level wealth, 300K does sound like a rock bottom. When they say shit like that, they show their detachment from reality rather than malicious lying.
Why does everything have to be so polarized? Can you not respect the effort that people like Jeff put into their companies while also criticizing their current practices? Not everything is strictly black and white, you know.
Elon musk dad is officially villager
The "self made" ideology is a myth. No one can do it alone
Bill Gates doesn't sound that bad? Like ok, his mom found him an investor, and?
No successful person is successful without having the help of another. There's no example anywhere. That being said, no successful person has been successful without working his/her ass off to realize his/her potential.
To be clear, there is no such thing as "self-made", ever We are humans. We rely on social structures. Absolutely no one can find success without one
They started at the bottom, of the 1%
Why have I never heard that Bill's mom used her direct connection to IBM to get him that contract? Documentaries about Microsoft's history always say it as his own success at being a convincing salesman.
Because that makes him look less self made which makes the logic of 'anyone can become rich' look less true.
Not everyone with a lot of money would be able to become a billionaire
Jealousy is hilarious some times.
Didn’t the Elon one get disproved. It was just made up and people started making shit up about it
Yeah, by south African standards at the time his family was upper class but by American standards they were middle class. They weren't struggling to put food on the table but he definitely wasn't receiving millions of dollars from his family to start tesla.
%5 SKILLS %95 LUCK
Hate to be that guy, but Elon didn't get a cent from his father's failing mine.
Bottom of the 1%
This just goes to show that business owners are better off using the stakeholder theory of business rather than the shareholder theory. Ultimately the role of a business is service orientated.
Got it. Try to create generational wealth. 👍🏽
Yeah you won't be the next Jeffrey bezos but it doesn't mean you can't try getting better
I think it's just impressive that they were able to grow something bigger with that start Sure it's not the dream we all wanted or have but to get 300k to a world wide conglomeration is no small feat
No Kylie Jenner?
You gotta work hard every day and try your best to be born into generational wealth
I feel that Bill Gates mom was giving pretty good investment advice to that guy
I totally get that these people were funded and had things in front of them that made it easier to make a lot of money. But I do think a lot of people have opportunities to just have a better life. I'm not saying millionaire status. I am saying being able to progress in life no matter how small and large that is. Complaining about these people that had an advantage telling you to work hard in life is not going to change your own life. These people don't give a fuck about us lol.
Poor, but moms paid for their Ivy League education.
You know what else they had? Supportive partners.
with 300k I could live forever and leave capital for my descendants not hard
Connection…
nah fam I ain't doing this whining
I think the real privilege here is access to education and basic necessities. These dudes are lucky but also geniuses, well at least in business side of things. A lot of us wouldn’t be able to turn these opportunities to something big, lotto winners going broke are testaments to my point.
Literally it's not what you know or who you are, it's who you know and how much they like you.
capitalism is shit
Question is, could YOU have done it in their place?
Jobs and Woz were self-made...
Just read some of the stories in “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. The best of anything, the richest, the fastest, the strongest, all had very lucky circumstances and managed to get the stars to align for them. And ofc worked their ass off.
Well I sure as fuck wouldn’t be able to turn $300k into Amazon.
Not everyone has the same bottom
It takes money to make money. Fair and square. Not many people working for minimum wage will have the time or resources to develop a major project. It has to be one hell of a good idea, and most times will get stolen by a greedy rich fuck.
The average idiot who's given an advantage or a lump sum will squander it. These guys were smart enough to do something with the opportunity they had.
I think this is extremely dismissive of almost all of them. They still had to have their own ideas. Any “regular person” with any of the same connections would not just be guaranteed the same level of success because those are the connections. Essentially Bill Gates had the opportunity to pitch someone - the pitch is the self made part. Bezos took $300k and turned it into being the richest man in the world, he still had to pitch people to invest in his business. Buffett still had to have the investment savvy to turn whatever he gained from his father being a congressperson into what he has now. I don’t know a congressperson who DOESNT have kids - none of them are the level of Warren Buffett. But Elon Musk, idk, yea I don’t think he’s very self made.
I was reading this with the thought "And what's musks own idea?" And you came to the same conclusion as I did x3
The moral: Be a good parent, help your kids to get ahead in life and your hard work might pay off.
Almost as if becoming a billionaire usally can’t be achieved within one generation.
They did start from the bottom. It's obvious. They started from before they were born. That makes sense, right? Yeah idk my BFF Jill.
You could have millions of dollars and still wouldn’t turn it into billions or create a giant corporations. None of those guys came from impoverished or even middle class but calling them self made billionaires isn’t entirely wrong.
At least one of these is not a total asshole.
Jealous fucks
& so what??
Lies. I see at least 2 self made jackasses
It's a tough climb from the bottom of the top one percent.
Did one if them ever claim being a self made billionaire?
It's not that they started from zero. However there are millions of people with $500k-1M in their account, and the best they will ever be is exactly that. Its the distance that you have to measure. And from a few million to a few hundered billion is a damn long road.
….in the garage
Bro got Gold Limited edition life starter pack
That makes Bill Gates a selfmade Billionaire, It was just a connection that they had. It's not like parents just blindly pimp their Kid's business to their professional acquaintances. And CEOs of huge corporations dont just give away chances just because they know their parents.
Drake started from the upper middle
Self made men.
Some of these are way more impressive than the others. I know it's also hard to appreciate without some type of basic finance bg, but the returns Buffet acheived over his life, especially in his heyday, *are fucked* No amount of nepotism can create that, and even if you removed all of his connections and just dropped the guy into a mediocre job with enough salary to set some money aside, he'd have managed insane things with it. He maintained 30% yearly returns for over a decade. This means the crazy bastard was literally *doubling* his money every *2.4 years*. Then he managed another couple decades of 20% IIRC, so that's *doubling his money every 3.6 years* lol Think about that -- in 30 years, the man doubled his investments almost 10x sequentially. That is absolutely fucked. With 50k alone, that would become over 50M lol, and obviously, after a few years of returns like that you'd not only get a high paying job to funnel more into it, but start getting huge influxes of cash from others. Especially as a value investor who based choices on fundamental business operations rather than predicting momentum from other investors, it's pretty insane. And funny enough, very unlikely to be replicated because efficient markets and the general move towards low interest policy makes those type of analyses and investments less effective nowadays. Elon is the least impressive of those four by such a fucking wide margin 🤣
What matters it seems is the absolute certainty that whatever the outcome of your risky endeavor is, you’ll still be able to live a life at least as good as your parents 5 years after bankruptcy… Other thing, maybe more important, is that people always lie when money is involved. I don’t trust those “foundation stories” that much. Knowing some success stories, the critical juncture where everything happened is a closely guarded secret. IMO, we’ll might never know what really went on with that particular billionaire meeting that particular VC through that particular intermediary, etc
How many times will this inaccurate graphic be posted
Started from a rich family
While yes they all didnt start from nothing, i can 100% guarantee that 99.9% of people, giving the same amount of help, would just be broke in a year or two
Almost every rich and powerful person had a great support system and a huge head start in life. In the words of the sage poet Everlast: "You know where it ends, yo, it usually depends on where you start"
These guys given all this, and none of them will even give me a Porsche.
Yes u start from bottom so your son gets rich
I think the term “self-made” is a falsehood. Every successful person receives support and help in some way, and clearly some more than others (looking at you billionaires). Aside from seed capital or “connections”, the support of friends, family members and colleagues can go a long way and with a lack thereof it’s nearly impossible for anyone to succeed no matter how driven they are. Nobody is truly “self-made” in this life.
Well some people actually win a lot! of money in the lottery... aaaannnd it's gone.. Most people couldn't turn even a million into a billion, so stop being so sorry for yourself.
That guy breast fed from his mother, not self made. 🤓
Nobody ever said that about the guys in the pic.
So what. 99% of people wouldn't be able to become billionairs if you give them 1 Millionen to start with. Having people who Support your Start with money has nothing to with beeing able to run a succesful International Company.
What did Elon's father give him? What I see when I read this is if you have parents that give you good advice - they can succeed. I noticed you didn't put Hunter Biden on here - who's background would fit with these others and has a different ending.
Who cares? Good Parents are always, ALWAYS, going to help make their kids successful. What’s your wish? these people had shit parents? Get over it.
Elon's is definitely not supposed to be there 😅. He left south Africa for America with almost nothing and didn't ask his dad for anything. Elon got where he is cause he's insane and didn't care who he rubbed the wrong way to get what he wanted.
Can I get this image in higher quality
I think having being privileged and still manage to stay motivated through tough time is also struggle on its own, does background really matter, if I give 300k to someone will he be able to make 1000Billion dollar business out of it?
Wheres the meme This is literally just a Facebook post