[justboxing]

The story holds it's own, and doesn't really need the "Overnight Millionaire" click bait.

Also,

> He and a buddy from elementary school started RxBar in 2012... By the time RxBar became a business with revenues north of $100 million, with virtually no outside investment, Rahal was grinding at it from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m daily.

This is anything but "overnight". Reminds me of the "overnight success" quotes in many forms, but recently from Shopify founder.

> It took about 10 years' time for Shopify to be an overnight success. - Tobias Lutke

[tempsy]

He went from nothing to $600M in 5 years. It isn't "technically" overnight but 5 years is not that long.

And the 7-10 grind was probably only true of year 0-1. RxBar got a lot of traction well before they were sold, and so to believe he was grinding for the entire 5 years in the same way he was in the basement when they first started is a bit naive.

Worse than "overnight millionaire" porn is "hustle" porn. The truth is for businesses that are fortunate to find product market fit the market carries you more than anything you've personally done.

[alxmdev]

This shouldn't be overlooked either:

"son of Lebanese American parents whose families were both in the juice business. His father’s family supplied ingredients, his mother’s sold consumer juice brands, and they met at the funeral of an industry executive. His father worked in the family juice business, too, and Rahal shaped himself after his father’s work ethic"

Upbringing and a significant degree of business and industry "in" couldn't have hurt. Nobody exists in a vacuum and I'm not saying this to take away from individual merit, but it often takes more than just hard work and talent to succeed like that.

[soneca]

> "RxBar got a lot of traction well before they were sold, and so to believe he was grinding for the entire 5 years in the same way he was in the basement when they first started is a bit naive"

I would have the opposite perception. That it is naive of your part assuming that once a business gets good traction that its founders start working less hours.

[m0zg]

>> RxBar got a lot of traction well before they were sold

And I'm not entirely sure why. The product is barely edible, and I'm pretty sure it's terrible for one's health, contrary to being marketed as a health food. This much sugar can't be good for you no matter what else you add. Seems like blind luck to me.

[OJFord]

Hang on though, you can be not an overnight success and still an overnight millionaire (even ignoring the pedantic 'at some point you tick into the 7th figure') - you can certainly spend years living off beans on toast while you work hard at building something that you then suddenly sell (at least a piece of) for >1M. The success took years, but the money came quickly.