
Twenty Billionaires Who Started With Nothing - icey
http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/20101123/twenty-billionaires-who-started-with-nothing
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dools
This type of thing frequently annoys me:

Larry Ellison: "There, he held odd jobs for eight years before founding a
software development company in 1977"

If he started with nothing, holding odd jobs, no savings, etc. _how_ did he
found a company?

These "start from nothing" tales are like graphs: when the scale on the Y-axis
is sufficiently large you lose all detail at the bottom end of the scale - the
all important details that happen very early in someone's "career" that make
all the difference in the long run.

The minor things like having your parents pay for you to go to college (if you
live in a country that doesn't supply you with free education) or finding an
angel investor or getting a scholarship to attend the right school etc. are
all to do with being fortunate - and all of them classify, in my opinion, as
"starting with something".

Whilst it's true that generational inheritance is not the only way to become
successful and every single one of these people have worked very hard to
achieve their well deserved success, there are people who have _truly_ nothing
and despite being as ready and willing to work and as bright and dilligent as
the next person, just happen to never be in the right place at the right time.

And yet we re-tell these glorious stories of the tiny tiny fraction of people
that enjoy stellar rags to riches stories and it reinforces the greatest lie
in capitalism: that if you're poor, it's your own fault.

Poverty is very much a social problem and needs to be dealt with on a social
scale - not by taunting the poor by saying "Look!? They did it, what's wrong
with you? Why can't you do it?"

~~~
nestlequ1k
Really? So the success story is only valid if they start with zero dollars,
crippled, and recently diagnosed with a terminal illness?

These are people who grew up in a rich country sure, and used every advantage
they could. However, their daddies didn't fund their dreams. They only had the
same resources that everyone on this board has. The fact that they took it,
and turned it into a billion dollars is something to be respected.

No one here is taunting the poor.

~~~
Locke1689
_These are people who grew up in a rich country sure, and used every advantage
they could. However, their daddies didn't fund their dreams. They only had the
same resources that everyone on this board has._

Maybe, maybe not. I have had many advantages in my life mostly given to me by
chance. My family is fairly wealthy. I attend an extremely and prestigious and
expensive college which is paid for by my parents, leaving me with no student
debt. Most importantly I have won a genetic lottery purely by chance. While
most studies say that there is a very large component of environment in innate
intelligence, most also say that there is a significant genetic component,
both of which influence my testing in the 99th percentile of most standardized
tests. Bill Gates seems to have had some similar advantages.

So, if my daddy does fund my dreams, does that make my hard work worth less?

~~~
nestlequ1k
Nope, hard work is appreciated from both rich and poor. But your advantages in
life means that no one is going to write an article about how you overcomed
obstacles to succeed.

It's sad, but I'd take your position and the tradeoffs any day.

------
krohrbaugh
It's curious that so many of them are 70+ years old, which means they were the
right age to benefit from the huge economic boom that occurred in the United
States after World War II.

Seems to support the hypothesis that success is equal parts smarts, hard work
and _timing_.

~~~
hop
And compound interest.

~~~
nico
What about luck?

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JabavuAdams
... a more interesting story than "200 M people who started with nothing, and
ended up with nothing."

~~~
wslh
Also, it's more or equally probable to win the lottery, casino, poker?

~~~
_delirium
A few of them are even pretty similar in the mechanics. The first person the
article profiles is Harold Hamm, a wildcat driller who struck a huge well in
1971, more or less by luck (he doesn't appear to have used any of the
geological-formation analysis that modern drilling uses). Gold-prospecting had
some similar success stories.

------
rbranson
They started as white guys, besides Oprah of course.

EDIT: Perhaps I should have been clearer. Given the average age, they were
significantly advantaged by the color of their skin and patriarchal state of
society, so they didn't start with "nothing." They took advantage of the many
opportunities afforded to white males at the time. I'm not saying they were
lazy or don't deserve their wealth, but Bloomberg seems to be painting them in
the best possible light.

~~~
cookiecaper
Also note the progress of their dozens of millions of white-guy
contemporaries. I think that being a white guy, even in the pre-civil-rights
era, is probably not especially significant to the financial success of these
people. If it were, I think many more white guys would be billionaires, right?

I'm sure what they did was easier because they were white males, but it
definitely feels like a cop-out to bring that up like it was a major factor
and not just another in the myriad of advantages anyone has to have to reach
such financial excellence. You might as well complain that "but they all have
entrepreneurial dispositions and personalities!", like their success was
unfair or diminished because they had certain inclinations.

We're all born into different circumstances and we're born with different
gifts; some make certain things harder and some make certain things easier. I
don't see the point in whining about it all the time.

~~~
rbranson
Oh please. How else can you explain that despite being 12% of the US
population, only one out of the 403 US billionaires is black? That's more than
a small advantage, it's practically a requirement. I'm not saying they didn't
try hard or they weren't significantly gifted, but success comes much easier
when the odds aren't totally stacked against you by the proud human tradition
of racism.

Your comparisons of race to personality traits are particularly curious. Being
born white (and male) isn't a "gift" unless patriarchal white society enforces
it. This isn't sports -- there is no significant correlation between genetic
advantages and being rich.

~~~
cookiecaper
Being born white and male _is_ , however, a circumstance.

Shall we remember the mantra "correlation is not causation"? A high incidence
of white male billionaires does not necessarily make white maleness
"practically a requirement" for billionaireship.

>This isn't sports -- there is no significant correlation between genetic
advantages and being rich.

I'm pretty sure that it's impossible to make this statement definitively, and
that it's also untrue. Those with "genetic" predispositions that lend toward
perseverance, independence of thought and action, etc., are much more likely
to become rich than those who don't have or eventually acquire such traits.

------
paul
It's interesting how many of them dropped out of school.

~~~
patrickk
Also interesting is how many of them grew up without a father.

~~~
TimothyFitz
Related: Steve Blank's hypothesis that dysfunctional families breed people for
the chaotic world of startups: [http://steveblank.com/2009/05/18/founders-and-
dysfunctional-...](http://steveblank.com/2009/05/18/founders-and-
dysfunctional-families/)

------
marcusestes
I'm fascinated with how many of these guys suffered the death of a parent at a
young age. I suppose nothing provides you with an all-encompassing motivation
to build security and wealth like being raised by a single lower middle class
parent.

~~~
mrshoe
There's a pretty explicit selection bias here. They compiled a list of people
who "started with nothing". Among the set of _all_ billionaires, I doubt you
would see a very high incidence of being raised by a widow(er).

~~~
marcusestes
There are 1,011 names on Forbes' Billionaires List. Of those, how many do you
imagine were born poor? My bet is that this list represents a fairly large
selection of billionaires who "came from nothing."

~~~
dantheman
I believe the parent post was saying that, having one parent would more make
you more likely to be poor. So when looking at the list of billionaires who
are poor the majority would have one parent.

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hswolff
I'm interested in seeing a mini-timeline of their rise to success. As in, at
what age did they start their successful venture and how many failures
preceded it. Humanizing these success stories is almost essential to fully
appreciate their accomplishments but to also put everything in context.

Although just a fluff piece, it could be so much more with that additional
information.

~~~
d2viant
As one example, if you read The Snowball (the biography about Warren Buffett),
it's a really interesting look at the individual, specific decisions he made
throughout his life. It's narrated as a timeline, so you can see how each
decision he made impacted him 10 or 20 years down the road.

------
patrickk
Interesting article about Thomas Peterffy, number 16 on the list (pdf):

[http://www.iinews.com/site/pdfs/IIMag_InteractiveBrokers_Nov...](http://www.iinews.com/site/pdfs/IIMag_InteractiveBrokers_Nov_2005.pdf)

From the Business Week piece on him:

" _According to a November 2005 profile in Institutional Investor, Peterffy
wrote computer code in his head while trading during the day, then went back
to the office to apply computer models to trading. The early use of computers
made him a pioneer in the field._ "

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quinndupont
Bullshit. Yet another fluff piece attempting to keep the American Dream alive.
Even the briefest encounter with demographic statistics shows that poor stay
poor, rich stay rich. In fact, in just today's Globe and Mail (Canada):
[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-rich-
really...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-rich-really-are-
getting-richer/article1819803/)

~~~
sandipc
the title of the article is "Twenty Billionaires Who Started with Nothing"

given that this is just a collection of photos and facts, how is this piece
bullshit?

~~~
Retric
Started with: _While most of the world's richest people earned their money,
some had farther to climb. Neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffett inherited
wealth,_ <\- that's wrong, buffet had a significant trust fund from dead
relatives.

Even _most of the world's richest people earned their money_ is somewhat
debatable, years of compound interest + a solid nest egg helped many
billionaires along. And plenty of them benefited from more from less than
ethical behavior and or luck than hard work.

PS: If you want to look for patterns look a little closer to the bell curve.
Start talking about 1 person out of 6 million and patterns are next to
meaningless.

~~~
David
You'll note that neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffet is among the 20.

That particular statement may be wrong -- but it's actually unrelated to the
thrust of the article. In fact with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet the author
was giving examples of people who did _not_ start with nothing. (The rest of
the sentence you half-quoted: "but they were raised in affluent homes so they
didn't have to worry about keeping their families fed.")

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kzm
How many of them are Jewish?

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run4yourlives
Only 6 have college degrees, and only one anything more than that (and MBA).

More than anything, I think that shows how massively out of touch the
education system is. It truly is designed for turning out as many drones as
possible.

~~~
chunkbot
You're kidding, right? How can you draw such a conclusion from a list of
twenty _billionaires_?

~~~
run4yourlives
Billionaires from nothing. Exactly the type of people that an education system
is supposed to help succeed.

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klbarry
For an in depth look at famous business billionaires lives, how the made their
decisions, and really just the details of their rise, I cannot recommend
enough H.W. Brand's Masters of Enterprise: [http://www.amazon.com/Masters-
Enterprise-American-Business-W...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Enterprise-
American-Business-Winfrey/dp/0684854732)

He is a great historian as well, but this is one of my favorite books.

------
phillijw
Doesn't everyone start with nothing?

~~~
JabavuAdams
Connections? Inherited wealth?

~~~
ced
A country that encourages entrepreneurship? Free access to high school
education? Genes that drive you forward instead of slouching on the couch? A
home? Food on the table?

------
hans
Another "you suck for being poor" story ... [update] really? 4 neg points,
nice.

