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by hn_throwaway_99 1052 days ago
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber and former CEO of Expedia, also has a pretty illustrious immigrant family - see the Personal Life section of his Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dara_Khosrowshahi
2 comments

Rich Iranians fleeing the revolution with their money and becoming rich Britons or Americans is not exactly a fairytale. Just because someone is an immigrant it doesn't mean they earned everything by their bootstraps.
> Just because someone is an immigrant it doesn't mean they earned everything by their bootstraps.

First of all, I never said it did. More importantly, though, they weren't able to flee the revolution with all their money, as most of it was confiscated by the Iranian government.

These types of folks are quite privileged, but not in ways that are often presented in arguments like the one you gave, i.e. "they were just born into money". Their main privileges are connections, their inherent confidence and belief that they have the power to be successful, and a deeply ingrained work ethic.

According to the source article in Wikipedia: "“We had very limited money,” Lili Khosrowshahi recalled of the family’s early days in the U.S. “I’d never worked before. I started working full-time, and every penny we earned was put in Dara [and two other son’s] education… and it was expensive. I remember at the time coffee was $0.15 [a cup], and I wouldn’t buy a cup of coffee for myself.”"

https://observer.com/2018/10/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-moth...

A lot of centimillionaires and billionaires tell a story like this, people usually take them with a pinch of salt.

I see it was her first ever media appearance. A lot of expensive PR went into those quotes you're repeating.

I always enjoy the story of poor immigrants 'humble beginnings' sent away to expensive boarding school in foreign country.
He also has a cousin who is the SVP of Engineering at Slack!

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/farzad-khosrowshahi