[rdbell]

Many people like to use examples like this to argue that people with family loans have an easy path to success.

$44k is an excellent launchpad but the reality is that most people given opportunity to take $44k would quickly turn it into $0.

I personally love hearing success stories like this and give full credit to people that can pull it off.

[eldavido]

The other thing I also try to keep in mind: you only get one shot at life.

You can spend that one shot obsessing over what others have, how unfair things are, and whine away the decades.

The other option is to realize some may have it better than you, others worse, but that's life, so make the best of it.

"Get busy living, or get busy dying."

[raydev]

> most people given opportunity to take $44k would quickly turn it into $0

Yes, because giving that much money to a kid and having it pay off also involves a lot of luck.

[fxtentacle]

That, or good parenting in the years before.

[johannes1234321]

Still needs luck, even the smartest kid can make a wrong bet or underestimate another market player.

[bsanr2]

That's partly because most people will have baggage to attend to that a college student living off student loans would not, and will lack the safety net that parents who can loan you $44k represent. There's not much here to convince that his performance is any better than the average among people in his position.

[cloverich]

You think turning a 44k loan into multiple successful businesses is average?

[bsanr2]

>among people in his position

That is, among college students without the baggage of full adulthood (debt, personal responsibilities, the mental and physical degradation that starts as early as your mid-twenties, and the risk aversion that comes with these things), and with the support of at least moderately wealthy parents and the affordances they bring: yes, there's not much here to show above-average performance. This individual received exceptional advantages which he certainly capitalized on, but there's no indication that he did so above the level of an average replacement.

We owe it to ourselves to be realistic about prospects.

[cloverich]

There's literally millions of college students in that position every year. Its absolutely not common for most of them to start _a_ successful business, let a lone several. I've worked at companies who had far more money, more connections, and more advantages, that ended up with less. OP's an outlier irrespective of their advantages.

> the mental and physical degradation that starts as early as your mid-twenties

Degrading in your twenties (in any meaningful sense) is _highly_ atypical.

[bsanr2]

Out of the ~20 million college students, the number that come from families with $40k in liquid assets is probably not plural-millions-with-an-s, and is probably considerably less than a million. With the field of competition winnowed thusly, and again considering the myriad unearned advantages such a background generally entails, this person's success is probably far more common than you're wagering. All you're proving is that people in his class are far less deserving than we'd thought.

>Degrading in your twenties (in any meaningful sense) is _highly_ atypical.

Nah. One's twenties are a common period for mental illness to develop, as well as the period when heretofore silent congenital defects become apparent. It is also generally the first time when injuries become much less likely to fully heal, and when they may become lifelong encumberances.

Someone who hasn't experienced some form of degradation by 30 - worsening eyesight, a sports injury, onset of depression, even balding - is someone who is privileged indeed.