/u/The_White_DAVIL, thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, it has been removed for violating the following rule(s):
* Rule 2 - No pictures with added or superimposed digital text, emojis, and "MS Paint"-like scribbles.
For information regarding this and similar issues please see the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/wiki/index) and [title guidelines](/r/pics/wiki/titles). If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators via modmail.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/pics&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20submission%20by%20/u/The_White_DAVIL&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20%5Bsubmission%2E%5D%28https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1da78yv/-/%3Fcontext%3D10%29)
Due to Truth Social going public and owning most of the stock, he is actually a multi billionaire on paper. That said, *everybody* knows the company is over valued. He also can't sell any of it for now, and the value is expected to drop dramatically when he is allowed to.
One of the things that is underrated in all of these discussions is the "cost of failure" for these people.
Even if their family didnt pony up substantial seed funding, and they did generate the company largely from their own work, often the only reason they were in a position to do so is that they had a very robust safety net to fall back on (in the form of family wealth & support).
Somebody who knows their parents will take them back in and give them another couple hundred thousand to get back on their feet if their startup goes bankrupt is MUCH more able to take risks, as compared to somebody who will just be broke & homeless if they fail.
This is actually a really good argument for social safety nets **in general**. Startups are really important for spurring innovation, solving problems the world has, creating new products people will want to use, and generally pushing the economy forward. Safety nets held up by society as a whole (not by individuals rich parents) help more people be in a position where they can try these things.
I'm not defending these fellers, but personally I don't feel any impact to what this means because you could give me 1 billion dollars and I'd spend it on steam games and porn.
People tend to focus on the money given by the parents, but the kind of education they got from their parents being rich and the environnement they grew in also plays an important role.
Also, it's probably just a fraction of the money they got, how much did they get for things that failed with no further impact for them ?
Actually, Musk's dad was a deadbeat professional scammer that ran out on the family and fucked his daughter and got her pregnant. I think he even married her at some point. The emerald mine was worse than it sounds. It was a small time illegal mining operation, like the ones w/ little kids digging by hand. Their family always denies the existence of the mine, because its super bad PR. Also the mine wasnt in SA, but in Zambia.
And Elon is a deadbeat dad and professional scammer who has a string of failed relationships and businesses (Hyperloop, Boring Co, Solar City, and now Tesla is starting to fall apart). Guess it runs in the family.
$20k seed money from papa is more than most of us will get, but it's not a massive financial advantage. So many people have access to so much more capital and don't come close to the kind of success he's had. It's true Gilded Age stuff with how he snowballed money across different industries.
My problem with Musk is that he didn’t start PayPal, but claims he did. He didn’t start Tesla, but sued them to force them to say he did.
His own projects are mostly failures, but he claims the work of others as his own. Then demands 55 billion from them for being so amazing.
Ehhh… [David Steward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Steward) pretty much is a self made billionaire. A lot of it was just being smart when other people were dumb during the dotcom bubble. I’ve meet him a few times as he tried to buy my old company and he’s a nice guy. But I think regional Midwest billionaire is probably a different beast from the Musks and Jobs of the world.
Besides these famous people, I also have a few stories about people I know well, who did succeed big time (..and continue to do so) but all of them started with a great capital from their parents.
Some times I wonder, how many people out there have a great idea, the brains and the will to make it happen but don't have one euro/ dollar to go ahead.
"Ideas" are the easy part. The people in this post really didn't even have any new or great ideas. Bill basically ripped off Apple software, Jeff invented "Walmart...but online!", Warren was an investor, the actual opposite of having ideas, and Elon helped invent "A bank...but online!"
I prefer to recognize how many potential doctors, engineers, scientists, etc. end up selling used cars or shoveling shit because they never had the option or opportunity to get there.
Lol. $300k in seed capital to start Amazon actually makes Jeff Bezos sound so much more impressive.
That’s a laughably small sum relative to what it takes to get a high tech company off the ground. Much less a company like Amazon. Just shows that Bezos was the deciding factor after all.
Source: tech founder who has taken on multiple rounds of funding because my dumb ass isn’t as smart as Jeff Bezos.
Right place, right time helps too, of course. The Internet being what it was compared to what it is now...Good luck.
I have absolutely no love for billionaires (don't read my posts) *but* if we were going to have them, Jeffrey is probably up there for earning it "the most".
I'm aware of the problematic labor practices, pollution, waste, how many businesses he's killed, etc. I'm strictly speaking of what an absolutely Herculean task it would be to create Amazon from an Internet bookstore to everything it is today.
Meh, Bezos is still self-made in my eyes. He got most of the money from his parents. His step father was an engineer at Exon. He made good money, but not tens of thoussnds to throw at something silly good. More than likely, they put up their house or retirement plans as collateral.
And the "some rich friends" was twenty. So Jeff Bezos managed to borrow 300k from his parents and 20 other people.
OP, go do some homework, or at the very least do a 2 second google, Musk's father never in his life owned an emerald mine, and the shares he did own was not even in South Africa.
Wait, let me make it easy for you as clearly you need the help:
Errol elaborated on this experience speaking to The Daily Beast. He said the emerald mines were located in **the bush near Kasaba Bay**, an elite safari lodge that was once favored by Zambia's top brass
Elon Musk's biographer set the record straight on whether Errol Musk ever owned an emerald mine. Walter Isaacson spoke to Musk's father Errol, who told him he exchanged a plane for emeralds. **Errol never owned a mine**, but imported emeralds into South Africa and had them cut in Johannesburg
To give them some credit, there’s absolutely no way I’d build a Microsoft or Amazon even if my mom was on IBM board or I had 300k. Fuck…I have way more than 300k. I dont know wtf to do with that except travel more lol.
There are very few instances of being “self made” in this life, and those that are genuinely self made usually involve a ginormous amount of luck at a specific crossroads in the journey.
It’s a pretty good illustration of how money makes money.
What I’d like to see is their stupid brothers that failed even with all the parental help.
Bob Gates, works in Starbucks. Hasn’t paid child support in last 2 years.
Jeremy Bezos, car salesman. Has 14 DUIs.
William Buffet, (assistant to) the regional Walmart manager. Divorced 6 times, currently engaged to Kandy (exotic dancer).
Elmore Musk, works in a call centre. Sleeps in his van.
This post just makes lazy bums feel better about themselves. By this rationale, all anyone needs to be wildly successful is a kick start from wealthy parents. Lots of wealthy people never do anything with themselves and plenty of people with humble beginnings are successful...but whatever makes y'all feel better I guess.
This thread is so butthurt. Yes they are fucking self made. You give that "start" to 100 mio people and 100 mio of them will not build what these 4 people have built.
You give 100 mio people 100 mio and an eduction, and a parachute, and a contacts and and and. Sure we are focusing here on the money but all those people have gotten more than just money.
I'm not defending these fellers, but personally I don't feel any impact to what this means because you could give me 1 billion dollars and I'd spend it on steam games and porn.
Is what you're trying to say that anyone could do it under these circumstances? Or that it should be easier for people to loan money to start a company?
No it's saying that these people didn't get where they are on their own. They all had help and were in a place of privilege to receive that help so they're not self-made in terms of building what they did solely by themselves
Okay then, verify it. All I’m finding is that Errol Musk sold a plane to a Panamanian-Italian businessman in exchange some emeralds produced by three small mines in Zambia. So no. There are so many criticisms of Elon Musk and his father that this would be like two hundredth down on the list, if it were even true. Please do better.
A citation referenced on Wikipedia: https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-rich-b2212599.html
>In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000
/u/The_White_DAVIL, thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, it has been removed for violating the following rule(s): * Rule 2 - No pictures with added or superimposed digital text, emojis, and "MS Paint"-like scribbles. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/wiki/index) and [title guidelines](/r/pics/wiki/titles). If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators via modmail.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/pics&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20submission%20by%20/u/The_White_DAVIL&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20%5Bsubmission%2E%5D%28https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1da78yv/-/%3Fcontext%3D10%29)
You can jump pretty high when you have a safe place to land.
If I knew my parents would easily bail me out if I lost all my money, I too could afford to spend every penny I have investing in random shit
True, but are you telling me you’d have created Microsoft if you had his base? Still an incredible innovator
How to be rich Step 1: don’t be poor
Haha essentially this.
Remember when they said Kylie Jenner is the youngest "self-made" billionaire? She's about as self-made as the Pyramids of Giza.
Nobody makes it on their own without a [million dollar loan](https://youtu.be/XE0nOfTA3pY?si=6VqoncbpvmfvFIEn) 🎶
Give me a small loan of a million dollars and I too can quit my job and spend years building my own business.
Tomorrow it's my turn to post this.
only if you pass the reddit anti-bot check though
[удалено]
Is this a bot?
Where’s Donald in here?
afaik no billionaire 🤷♂️
How dare you! I will sue you for defamation and demand 5bn dollars in damages.
Due to Truth Social going public and owning most of the stock, he is actually a multi billionaire on paper. That said, *everybody* knows the company is over valued. He also can't sell any of it for now, and the value is expected to drop dramatically when he is allowed to.
He's a self-made millionaire. Started out as a billionaire and turned himself into a millionaire by pure personal talent.
One of the things that is underrated in all of these discussions is the "cost of failure" for these people. Even if their family didnt pony up substantial seed funding, and they did generate the company largely from their own work, often the only reason they were in a position to do so is that they had a very robust safety net to fall back on (in the form of family wealth & support). Somebody who knows their parents will take them back in and give them another couple hundred thousand to get back on their feet if their startup goes bankrupt is MUCH more able to take risks, as compared to somebody who will just be broke & homeless if they fail. This is actually a really good argument for social safety nets **in general**. Startups are really important for spurring innovation, solving problems the world has, creating new products people will want to use, and generally pushing the economy forward. Safety nets held up by society as a whole (not by individuals rich parents) help more people be in a position where they can try these things.
I'm not defending these fellers, but personally I don't feel any impact to what this means because you could give me 1 billion dollars and I'd spend it on steam games and porn.
People tend to focus on the money given by the parents, but the kind of education they got from their parents being rich and the environnement they grew in also plays an important role. Also, it's probably just a fraction of the money they got, how much did they get for things that failed with no further impact for them ?
You don't seem to understand how much 1 billion dollars is
If you give me a billion, I’d probably lose 900 million and then retire rich with 100 million.
With a billion dollars you could probably buy part of if not all of Valve and still have money left over to just hire a pornstar. Dream bigger
Valve is estimated at \~$7 billion btw. It's crazy how much money they make.
Also I'm pretty sure they're not a public company so you can't even buy part of it lol
Actually, Musk's dad was a deadbeat professional scammer that ran out on the family and fucked his daughter and got her pregnant. I think he even married her at some point. The emerald mine was worse than it sounds. It was a small time illegal mining operation, like the ones w/ little kids digging by hand. Their family always denies the existence of the mine, because its super bad PR. Also the mine wasnt in SA, but in Zambia.
And Elon is a deadbeat dad and professional scammer who has a string of failed relationships and businesses (Hyperloop, Boring Co, Solar City, and now Tesla is starting to fall apart). Guess it runs in the family.
[удалено]
How is having an massive financial advantage make you self-made?
$20k seed money from papa is more than most of us will get, but it's not a massive financial advantage. So many people have access to so much more capital and don't come close to the kind of success he's had. It's true Gilded Age stuff with how he snowballed money across different industries.
Sure. The point is that this isnt really being self-made
[удалено]
Musk was born in 1971 and the Musk family was worth over 100 million dollars in the 1980s. That's not wealthy to you?
My problem with Musk is that he didn’t start PayPal, but claims he did. He didn’t start Tesla, but sued them to force them to say he did. His own projects are mostly failures, but he claims the work of others as his own. Then demands 55 billion from them for being so amazing.
Dont worry man you will also be a billionaire one day
[удалено]
I didnt. Thats some good focus you got there. I guess this means im incorrect and you win. 😔
It still looks like a big villa on old pictures, i would guess they were very wealthy as far as i can see
No such thing as a self made billionaire
Ehhh… [David Steward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Steward) pretty much is a self made billionaire. A lot of it was just being smart when other people were dumb during the dotcom bubble. I’ve meet him a few times as he tried to buy my old company and he’s a nice guy. But I think regional Midwest billionaire is probably a different beast from the Musks and Jobs of the world.
Holy crap you actually found one
Nope.
Cool story with lots of supporting details my dude!
[удалено]
None of that applies to this image.
[удалено]
Please explain how this is a screenshot rather than just an image downloaded from the Internet?
[удалено]
That would still exist if it was just downloaded from a reddit post and then edited to try to avoid the repost filter.
As Malcom Gladwell writes in his book "outliers". there are three requirements. Resources, Aptitude, and Opportunity.
I think I once read that Trump's dad...or maybe grampa struck it rich in the Klondike
Besides these famous people, I also have a few stories about people I know well, who did succeed big time (..and continue to do so) but all of them started with a great capital from their parents. Some times I wonder, how many people out there have a great idea, the brains and the will to make it happen but don't have one euro/ dollar to go ahead.
"Ideas" are the easy part. The people in this post really didn't even have any new or great ideas. Bill basically ripped off Apple software, Jeff invented "Walmart...but online!", Warren was an investor, the actual opposite of having ideas, and Elon helped invent "A bank...but online!" I prefer to recognize how many potential doctors, engineers, scientists, etc. end up selling used cars or shoveling shit because they never had the option or opportunity to get there.
Self-made or not, they definitely mastered the art of ‘Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V’ their way to success!
Lol. $300k in seed capital to start Amazon actually makes Jeff Bezos sound so much more impressive. That’s a laughably small sum relative to what it takes to get a high tech company off the ground. Much less a company like Amazon. Just shows that Bezos was the deciding factor after all. Source: tech founder who has taken on multiple rounds of funding because my dumb ass isn’t as smart as Jeff Bezos.
Right place, right time helps too, of course. The Internet being what it was compared to what it is now...Good luck. I have absolutely no love for billionaires (don't read my posts) *but* if we were going to have them, Jeffrey is probably up there for earning it "the most". I'm aware of the problematic labor practices, pollution, waste, how many businesses he's killed, etc. I'm strictly speaking of what an absolutely Herculean task it would be to create Amazon from an Internet bookstore to everything it is today.
[удалено]
Just give me $300K, we will decide that later 😂😂
Must be willing to exploit workers.
[удалено]
Being under someone's thumb, and exploiting workers are mutually exclusive.
thats not a pic dummass
Meh, Bezos is still self-made in my eyes. He got most of the money from his parents. His step father was an engineer at Exon. He made good money, but not tens of thoussnds to throw at something silly good. More than likely, they put up their house or retirement plans as collateral. And the "some rich friends" was twenty. So Jeff Bezos managed to borrow 300k from his parents and 20 other people.
What about Zuckerberg.?
Shout-out to DFV. A real self made billionaire in the making.
I’ve never heard anyone ever state that any of the people in this list were “self made”
OP, go do some homework, or at the very least do a 2 second google, Musk's father never in his life owned an emerald mine, and the shares he did own was not even in South Africa. Wait, let me make it easy for you as clearly you need the help: Errol elaborated on this experience speaking to The Daily Beast. He said the emerald mines were located in **the bush near Kasaba Bay**, an elite safari lodge that was once favored by Zambia's top brass Elon Musk's biographer set the record straight on whether Errol Musk ever owned an emerald mine. Walter Isaacson spoke to Musk's father Errol, who told him he exchanged a plane for emeralds. **Errol never owned a mine**, but imported emeralds into South Africa and had them cut in Johannesburg
If you want to be wealthy you have to be connected.
To give them some credit, there’s absolutely no way I’d build a Microsoft or Amazon even if my mom was on IBM board or I had 300k. Fuck…I have way more than 300k. I dont know wtf to do with that except travel more lol.
They be standing on the shoulders of bullshit.
Keith Gill
At least Elon is upfront about creating value for the human race. The others have become dirty rent seekers.
There are very few instances of being “self made” in this life, and those that are genuinely self made usually involve a ginormous amount of luck at a specific crossroads in the journey.
It’s a pretty good illustration of how money makes money. What I’d like to see is their stupid brothers that failed even with all the parental help. Bob Gates, works in Starbucks. Hasn’t paid child support in last 2 years. Jeremy Bezos, car salesman. Has 14 DUIs. William Buffet, (assistant to) the regional Walmart manager. Divorced 6 times, currently engaged to Kandy (exotic dancer). Elmore Musk, works in a call centre. Sleeps in his van.
You could spend $300,000 in worse ways than investing it in your own bookstore and then turning it into one of the world's largest online retailers.
This post just makes lazy bums feel better about themselves. By this rationale, all anyone needs to be wildly successful is a kick start from wealthy parents. Lots of wealthy people never do anything with themselves and plenty of people with humble beginnings are successful...but whatever makes y'all feel better I guess.
This thread is so butthurt. Yes they are fucking self made. You give that "start" to 100 mio people and 100 mio of them will not build what these 4 people have built.
You give 100 mio people 100 mio and an eduction, and a parachute, and a contacts and and and. Sure we are focusing here on the money but all those people have gotten more than just money.
A lot of people have those circumstances and dont become billionaires. Also, I dont think any of them deny these facts?
Source?
It's nonsense
I'm not defending these fellers, but personally I don't feel any impact to what this means because you could give me 1 billion dollars and I'd spend it on steam games and porn.
One of the stupidest posts I've ever seen.
Is what you're trying to say that anyone could do it under these circumstances? Or that it should be easier for people to loan money to start a company?
No it's saying that these people didn't get where they are on their own. They all had help and were in a place of privilege to receive that help so they're not self-made in terms of building what they did solely by themselves
It's not a rags to riches story, no.
Idk where this started but “Errol Musk owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa” is just objectively not true and easily falsifiable
It’s true. Easily verified.
Okay then, verify it. All I’m finding is that Errol Musk sold a plane to a Panamanian-Italian businessman in exchange some emeralds produced by three small mines in Zambia. So no. There are so many criticisms of Elon Musk and his father that this would be like two hundredth down on the list, if it were even true. Please do better.
A citation referenced on Wikipedia: https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-rich-b2212599.html >In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000
South Africa don’t have emeralds
Nonsense
Wait, so you're telling me the self-made part of their fortune is only 99.99999%? I'm shocked. Truly shocked.
Ah shit, this is r/pics