[pmichaud]

I think in conversations like these most people on the successful side underestimate how valuable the starting advantages were, and most people not on the successful side overestimate how valuable the starting advantages were. Meanwhile almost everyone misunderstands what the advantages really are.

People will talk about the $300k loan Bezos started with and think "boy golly, with 300 THOUSAND dollars, I could do anything!" meanwhile millions of people with much more than that fritter it away on nothing, even if they are trying not to. It takes something more to be Bezos.

Whereas the proverbial Bezos will think about the grit and determination it took to march for decades through treacherous financial and political swamps, and think "would I have let a lack of an initial 300k stop me from even starting? Would I have failed to secure the capital and cooperation without that seed? Given the heroics I've pulled over the years? Hell no, that wouldn't have stopped me."

But here's the part that most people misunderstand. The 300k is a small advantage, it might have made a difference, and some cases might make THE difference, but it's only the most concrete, obvious advantage. The real thing is like this:

In my earliest memories I was pretty poor, but also in those memories both my parents were going to university, while my dad was packing fiberglass at a factory. Then they graduated and he got a job and we became suburban middle class, my dad staying at his big corporation for the rest of his life, while my mom more or less stayed at home although she went back to school and ended up about half way through a PhD program. I would think about what career I wanted as a child, and what school I might go to, that sort of thing.

Fast forward to my first wife who I met when I was 17. She is self described "british ghetto trash," and she emigrated because she couldn't escape her accent, in a phrase. She taught me what I didn't know about privilege, at a time before that was a term anyone was using for this purpose. The reality she knew in the council housing (ie projects) where she grew up was that her dad was a scam artist flake who floated in and out of her life without regard for the many promises he made, and whenever he pulled off a big one he'd show up and splash a little cash around before running off again. He was far from ashamed, he was a "2 types of people in this world!" type scammer. Her mom wasn't much better, basically scamming the government for benefits, working whatever angle she could but never actually "working working."

My ex never thought about careers or schools or anything. She thought about what scam she could pull to make it to next month. It was a weird series of events that brought her across the pond, and into university and beyond.

That's what Bezos had that my ex didn't have. He thought he belonged inside society, he thought he could do things and that people would let him. He thought that so very much that never even had to think it consciously. The same for her but opposite, the idea of participating in society at all, never mind changing it was utterly foreign to her experience.

I think it was crushingly more important than the 300k in terms of pivotal advantages. It sucks to start with bad cards, but it's much tougher to not be in the game in the first place.

[solarmist]

This is such a good point. People tend to focus on money as the main form of privilege, but that internalized sense of “I belong here” might matter even more. It’s not just confidence—it’s a kind of default assumption that you’ll be taken seriously, that you’ll have options, that failure won’t wreck your life.

I’ve seen it in startups too. Some founders take bold risks because they know, consciously or not, that if it doesn’t work out, they’ll be fine. Others carry the weight of “I can’t afford to screw this up,” and that changes how they operate. Even if they’re equally capable, the emotional cost of risk is just higher when you don’t have that built-in safety net.

And from the outside, those differences are invisible. Both people might succeed, but one was playing on easy mode and didn’t know it. The other had to brute-force their way through every step. That gap is real, and we don’t talk about it enough.

[umbra07]

Can't you just as easily make the opposite argument?

Founders that have a safety net have less drive and motivation to give it their all, because they have a safety net. They simply just don't have the same pressure to not fail, because if they do - no biggie.

The founder with no safety net, no real backup, needs to give it his all, because he's doomed if his idea doesn't work out.

[dkersten]

It’s both.

Upbringing, background, mindset, social safety nets (eg knowing that if you fail, you’ll still be fine) — these things are huge and make a huge difference.

But 300k then is about 650k today, and just the time this would buy me alone would mean I’d be able to dedicate my full energy to a few projects that, while I don’t think could ever reach the scale of Amazon, would at least have the potential to make a reasonable return on that initial investment. The 300k is a huge boost that a lot of people don’t have access to.

But you’re absolutely right. If you’re not in the game at all, it’s very difficult to get in, and those other non-financial benefits are a big deal.

[munificent]

> He thought that so very much that never even had to think it consciously.

This is such a huge part of it. Our upbringing gives us our culture and the set of ideas and expectations that form our "default mode" thinking.

If your default mode assumption is that you are capable and have agency, that investing in a long-term project will reliably produce long-term value, and that risks are often worth taking, you are set up to try to build something amazing.

But if your default mode is that you are a pawn at the whims of other people, that whatever you try to build can be easily swept away by chance or bad actors, and that you've got no room to fail, then at best you'll just try to eke out a stable existence with as little risk taking as possible.

[ryandrake]

Plus, this isn't just a mindset that people have in their heads, some chip on their shoulder from their upbringing holding them back: It's their actual reality.

Some people do have agency to act, and the assurance that their actions will produce value, and they are in fact not in catastrophic danger. And some people really do not have agency, they are pawns largely under the control of others, and live on a knife's edge where everything they have might be swept away by things entirely outside of their control. These realities shape whether it is even possible to take the risks that are necessary to reach success.

[mrandish]

> He thought he belonged... he thought he could do things and that people would let him.

This is a good point and, in the case of successful startup entrepreneurs, it may not rely solely on how much society grants or denies that belonging. Entrepreneurs tend toward a kind of selective irrationality in how they see themselves and in how they think others see them. Steve Jobs was always the first victim and/or beneficiary of his own reality distortion field. Internally, this lack of self-awareness would tend to help one ignore some of the emotional downsides of belonging being denied and externally to seize more belonging than is being granted - just through sheer chutzpah.

I've heard it said that many successful startup entrepreneurs feel all the insecurity of 'imposter syndrome' without processing any of the 'imposter' part. They tend to think they belong even when they objectively don't. While irrational, annoying and unhealthy, it's hard to imagine this doesn't have some advantages too.

[watwut]

> Whereas the proverbial Bezos will think about the grit and determination it took to march for decades through treacherous financial and political swamps

I cant help, but these people are frequently the swamp. They fit right in, they create it and they create horrible environment for everyone else.

[darth_avocado]

It’s not just starting advantage, it’s also luck which gets talked about in the blog. You could start with a set of bad cards and still end up being much ahead than someone with good cards, if you have a little bit of luck.

> That you got lucky at a singular moment in history and now you're an old man is not an easy set of facts to accept.

This often gets talked about when we discuss CEOs and Billionaires, but it’s also equally applicable to engineers, managers and directors. You could go to the same college, start at the same company, work the same amount of hours, work similar projects, and bam, one of you gets laid off, the other one gets to see promotions and stock growth. And these successes then compound.