Comment by EGreg 4 days ago
People, it wasn’t just a safety net.
Bezos’s mom was his first investor, giving him $300K.
Then he also had connections to millionaires through his family
Bill Gates’ mother, Mary Gates, was instrumental in securing Microsoft's first major deal with IBM through her connections. His family was wealthy and provided connections and support
What about Replit? Two guys in a coffee shop in Jordan, you cannot be much further from Silicon Valley. They got turned down four times from YC and decided never to try again. But pg fell in love with the startup and urged him to try again. Then during the interview one of them got into a heated argument with Michael Siebel and thought for sure he had failed.
Yet he got in without a wealthy family and an American Ivy League degree. There are lots of other examples, I can even think of a one in Michigan.
And how many of the thousands of YC companies have disappeared in to obscurity?
How many of these do you think will see a successful exit?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E...
And “raising funding” is not a successful business. Having an exit where you as the founder makes an outsized return is.
Another definition is being profitable. Any idiot can sell dollars for $0.95 backed by VC’s hoping to find the “greater fool”
Sure, but if Bill Gates was a drug addict with no software, there would have been no deal and he certainly wouldn't have been successful.
Whenever I see the topic of success, people LOVE to talk about 'survivorship bias' as a way to somehow discredit the person that is successful and also give an excuse as to why they might not be successful.
It's pretty destructive in a community that's supposed to be about startups and building businesses. This is why I originally came here years ago, but it seems like the mindset has shifted to anti-capitalist group think.
No one is discrediting his success. It’s just the banal idea of if you have “grit” and work really hard, you are somehow guaranteed success or even have more than a slim chance.
"It’s just the banal idea of if you have “grit” and work really hard, you are somehow guaranteed success"
When has anyone ever said this? I can study for a test and still fail, but not studying ever will guarantee failure.
"Grit" and hard work may not always equal success, but it will improve your odds to the point where success is very possible.
Find companies that make a lot of money and convince them to give you some of that money in exchange for your labor if you want the best risk/reward ratio.
I would much rather be in the position of an intern I mentored who at 22 made over $700K in gross income between cash and RSUs (that could easily be converted into cash unlike “equity” in private companies) their first four years out of college than some struggling founded trying to start yet another AI company so grateful they got $200k from YC while still eating beans and rice that they had to split among three founders.
> giving him $300K
Yes, and cities are filled with $300K and up houses. The idea that Bezos started Amazon with unusual vast wealth is wrong.
Yes. But how many can and will give their children $300K in cash? Did she refinance her house and use the cash to give to her son?
If you can buy a house for $300k, you can invest the money instead. If you choose "house", you're going to have a much harder time accumulating wealth.
I wish I hadn't bought a house instead of investing it all in MSFT. I know people at the time who borrowed every dollar they could and plowed it into MSFT. They became very, very wealthy. I was too chicken. Bwaaack, cluck cluck!
Or you could have invested in every YC company that went public.
https://medium.com/@Arakunrin/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-...
You never hear about the people who made bad investments.
Or everyone who invested their life savings, refinanced their house, withdrew everything from their 401K and still failed.
If you have a paid off house you have some place to live, the alternative is to be paying rent that goes up every year.
My rent in 2016 before I had my house built was $1800. My mortgage was $2300. By 2024, rent had gone up at the same place to $2400. My mortgage besides property taxes and insurance won’t go up nearly as much[1]
It reminds me of people in BigTech that don’t sell their RSUs as soon as they vest and diversify. I make just as much now in cash as I did in BigTech with the difference being 40% was in RSUs. Why would I keep 40% of my income in AMZN any more than I would take 40% of my cash income and put in AMZN?
[1] Anecdotely I sold in 2024 at exactly twice the price I had a built for in northern Atlanta and bought a condo in state tax free central Florida for half the price.
Bezos's mom giving Bezos 300k was more of a favor to the mom, not the kid. He was already VP at DE Shaw at the time.