[iancmceachern]

It's not an excuse that people (me) tell ourselves it's a documented fact:

"There is a strong connection between your parent’s income and your chances of becoming a startup entrepreneur, with those from a strong financial background having a higher chance of becoming entrepreneurs,” said Shira Greenberg, the chief economist Israel’s ministry of finance, in a recent report conducted by his agency and reported by the Jerusalem Post...The study – which used demographic, academic and financial data from Israeli entrepreneurs between the ages of 25 and 35 and their families – found that the income of an entrepreneur’s parents was the most important factor towards the likelihood of starting up a business."

Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/20...

Since you poked at me, I'm not telling myself anything. I've had a very deliberate, successful, and thankful career in med tech startups and large companies and as a result have gained some wisdom and had the opportunity to observe how the world works around me, and am now sharing that wisdom and observations made.

[ericd]

That doesn’t seem to say that entrepreneurs rely on family money other than a couple of tired anecdotes about Musk/Gates. It’s mostly saying that successful entrepreneurs tend to come from more successful parents, but I’m pretty sure that’s true of success in most things. Having successful parents tends to help the kids a lot, and the money itself is among the least important ways, imo.

And it wasn’t meant to be directed at you (I’m glad you’ve found success), just that it’s a self-defeating attitude that’s distressingly common. Family money itself is not important when starting something. Though it is helpful to have a couch to fall back on if you need it.

[iancmceachern]

Did you see the study? There is a whole study they did, it's not just the first paragraph or two with the anecdotes, there is meat later in the article that addresses your "plot holes"

Also see this data: "University of California, Berkeley economists Ross Levine and Rona Rubenstein analyzed the shared traits of entrepreneurs in a 2013 paper, and found that most were white, male, and highly educated. “If one does not have money in the form of a family with money, the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop quite a bit,”

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/entrepr...

[ericd]

Do you have a direct link to the underlying study?