[birdsbirdsbirds]

As a programmer, it's possible to do the same, just one decade later. Jack Ma argues in some talk that people should gain experience before starting a company. This mirrors the numbers that show that older founders have a much higher success rate. After having worked for a decade, there can be enough money to handle some years without income.

Bill Gates was not successful because he started young, but because his mother had the connections to IBM (see some other comment). That cannot be replicated with basic income.

[nomay]

What Jack Ma didn't tell you is that those things don't matter that much, it's more of a lip service to burnish his image, a victory lap. His father is well-connected both in business and politics and provided him access and opportunities plebs counld dream of. Hell he didn't even have any tech experience, he was a english teacher.

And Alipay would have been killed a million times as it infringes the state monopoly on finance, had him not been shielded by the quagmire of local and central politics.

[Bakary]

No aspect of a massively successful person's path can be meaningfully analyzed and replicated other than in general principles that are already obvious (be ambitious, proactive, etc.)