[karambahh]

Agree that is entirely hypothetical and Elon Musk is an interesting example. I know he is sometimes risking a very large proportion of his private capital on his new ventures, but I would never have called that "bootstrapping".

(Once again, let me re-iterate that I have understood that "my" definition of boostrapping is not correct)

To me, a billionaire going all out on a new project is in a better financial, business & social position. "hey look, Elon Musk has launched a new thing, took his own billion to build it, must be awesome like his past ventures" compared to "hey, here is that John Doe we never heard of with his project he built in his home. To me, with financial capital comes social capital. When you invest all your money in a project, if it's 1B$ your social status "highly affluent guy with connections up to the white house and every Fortune 500 companies" does not change and is immensely useful. If it's your 5k€ your social capital is low and will get from "successful salaried software developer" to "the noodles-eating guy who didn't have a shower in 4 days". Guess which one is most likely to win deals?

[jacquesm]

If you don't get deals because you don't shower then that's a solved problem since Roman times and you should only blame yourself ;)

Other than that, yes, billionaires have some advantages that us ordinary mortals do not have. But to stick with Elon Musk, he wasn't born a billionaire (but he did go to a private school, but that's not unheard of in SA).

Once you're past $1M net worth or so the game gets easier, sometimes a lot easier. But $1M vs $1B doesn't make much of a difference if the business tanks and you've invested all of your capital in your own business.

And that's the main reason you don't see billionaires usually spending all their money on their own projects: they spread the risk around to avoid possibly losing it all.

[karambahh]

> If you don't get deals because you don't shower then that's a solved problem since Roman times and you should only blame yourself ;)

Absolutely!

> Once you're past $1M net worth or so the game gets easier, sometimes a lot easier.

I sometimes feel that difficulty of doing business is halved with very order of magnitude, being friends with business owners whose net worth are between 10k€ and 50M€. My 50M€ friend has access to things my 10k€ wouldn't even believe exists.

50M€ is "let me talk to the ministry chief of staff about this. I'll also talk to the CEO of a fortune 500 company about this mild inconvenience"

10k€ is queuing at the city building in the hope that maybe someone will do something about the closed road leading to your shop.

> But $1M vs $1B doesn't make much of a difference if the business tanks and you've invested all of your capital in your own business.

> And that's the main reason you don't see billionaires usually spending all their money on their own projects: they spread the risk around to avoid possibly losing it all.