
Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk–they come from families with money - doener
https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene-for-risk-they-come-from-families-with-money/
======
csallen
Being a developer really helps. I've interviewed many dozens of self-funded
founders who've explained that the reason they felt comfortable "taking the
leap" of entrepreneurship was because they knew they could always fall back to
working as developers. Getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to write
code is a pretty solid fallback plan.

This was true for me as well, and is why I've never had trouble starting
things, even when I didn't have investors or a rich family to rely on.

YMMV, etc…

~~~
soneca
Not only that, but (for tech products) they don't have to invest tens of
thousands of dollars paying someone to build the software.

~~~
rolltiide
Exactly, being an entrepreneur has a survivorship bias from having an excess
in money or some other resource

People that want to make high margin, high growth companies will be making
“tech companies” (cloud based ephemeral software services)

Developers are rich in “I dont need to pay other developers I cant communicate
with to build the initial idea” and are ALSO rich in money

Survivorship bias means they can try and fail and try again very quickly,
compared to someone that gets one shot before having to save up again for the
next 15 years who experiences life changes and loved ones saying “maybe its
time to get realistic Roy”

~~~
ct520
I feel your post sums up my thoughts well. As a developer it easier to be an
entrepreneur for sure .

------
godelski
Okay, but so what? Do we do something about it? Or is this just complaining.

I feel like this is analogous to something many people here are used to. We
all know people that have been programing since they were a child. Those
people had money for a computer (I'm under 30 and this was still a thing).
Most of those people had a parent or two that were more highly educated and
even more likely that one did STEM (and probably knew some programming or
someone that did).

Is that privilege? Yes.

Do I wish I had those opportunities as a kid? Kinda

Am I going to do anything about it? No. Why would I?

If this article is only about the myth of the self made
millionaire/billionaire then okay. But that doesn't come across. We all
already knew that these people came from high places of privilege. But
complaining about how they had opportunities that we don't is useless. The
problem is lack of opportunities and resources for the less privileged. You
don't even need to take away the opportunities from those already privileged.
This isn't a zero sum game. If you want to present solutions I am happy to
read more articles and do my part. But this just came off as complaining.

~~~
jmpman
Maybe determine how much money the families need to have in order to spawn
entrepreneurs? I suspect that number isn’t $100M, but more like $10M. Then,
change the tax policy to create 10 families with $10M instead of 1 family with
$100M.

~~~
thenaturalist
How would you come up with that number?

As noted by others in this thread, starting with entrepreneurship is a
combination of knowledge, skills and somewhat being financially independent
enough to commit significant amounts of time to creating something from
scratch and - most significantly - having a network to achieve the latter.

Creating opportunity is a systemic, complex and long term challenge that you
can't simply put a $ amount to. Your surroundings and upbringing shape you
massively and there is no money which can make up for that and time. When
you're 25 coming from a dirt poor community and are the first to study in your
family there is such a slim chance you have seized dozens of opportunities
correctly so that they stack up to put you in a spot where you are not only
able to (aka resources present) but capable of achieving successes comparable
to privileged peers. Network and skills are essential. Highly recommend
reading "Cities and Ambition"
([http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html))
for more context.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the old Chinese proverb "Give a man a
fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime." is true when it comes to creating opportunity. It's not a "point in
time", but a continuous problem.

~~~
jmpman
Maybe you could look at the family financial situation of entrepreneurs at the
time they founded a company? With that information, along with the number of
families in each wealth bracket, and company revenue after N years, you can
calculate what the optimal population of wealth distribution is for maximum
entrepreneurialism. Not that I expect any country to pass such laws to shape
their elite class distribution in this manner, but it’s a good drinking
conversation.

~~~
devdas
It's not limited to the financial situation. You also need a social network,
and growing that network takes time.

------
DoreenMichele
_Many startup founders do not take a salary for some time. The average cost to
launch a startup is around $30,000, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Data
from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor show that more than 80% of funding
for new businesses comes from personal savings and friends and family._

This sounds to me like they really mean _big money, high growth enterprises_
and are out-of-hand dismissing the kind of people who start more traditional
small businesses with no goal of ever becoming a Mega Corp.

I haven't looked at the data too much recently, but twenty to thirty years
ago:

Women had trouble getting funding at all, plus typically had ongoing
obligations to do the _women 's work_ at home, so they typically started
smaller ventures with less risk and less growth potential. They were
disinclined to borrow any money at all and completely bootstrapped it, paying
for any growth out of earnings as they were able to afford it.

If your very definition of _business_ de facto excludes the type of businesses
typically started by women -- and no doubt other less-privileged groups -- you
shouldn't be shocked when they are underrepresented in your data.

~~~
WalterBright
My great-aunt borrowed money from a bank to start her own beauty salon. In the
1920s.

Of course, she also had a reputation for ignoring what other people said she
couldn't do, and hugely enjoyed her life. I wish I'd met her.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Your great-aunt sounds great.

My parents had a small business for a time back before the internet and all
that. It failed.

I knew a lot of small business people growing up. I was surrounded by people
who worked from home, etc.

Most small businesses are not incorporated. If they have to be incorporated to
be part of your study, it's practically a dog whistle that "We're actually
only studying businesses created by rich people."

~~~
WalterBright
I started many businesses as a kid. One was when I lived in Germany for a
time. I ordered American candy from a friend back in the states, and would
sell it at school to the other American kids who missed it.

I'd pay for the candy by sending my friend gummi bears, which were not
available at the time in the US.

I probably could have made decent money at it if I wasn't so lazy.

------
jcims
(2015) Not sure what the point of this article is. It seems to take a pretty
narrow view of what constitutes entrepreneurship then curses it with
privilege.

~~~
antonkm
I'd say this could probably give some people a way of looking at things, the
environment they live in and that privilege is often there even though it's
tabu / taken for granted.

At the same time, I find this to be true for a small type of entrepreneurship.
My barber, the local store, my favorite restaurant is not really connected to
privilege and everyone of them has gotten where they are anyways.

~~~
jcims
Your second paragraph gets at what I meant by ‘narrow view’. Entrepreneurship
happens all over the country at just about all layers of the socioeconomic
spectrum.

------
iamleppert
It’s 100% true. At this point in my tech career, I could start a company, but
how am I going to support myself while that company is getting off the ground?
I’ve worked for startups most of my career and all the founders are the same:
rich and/or came from Stanford or MIT. Most have been mediocre at tech at best
(that’s why they hire me) and have been poor business people and poor
managers.

There’s nothing special about them except they have all come from money. Not a
single one was the bootstrap rags to riches story. I know those are out there
but don’t let them fool you: at least in the Bay Area tech startups (if you
want to be a founder) is a rich man’s game. This is based on my experience
working for about 10 startups over about 15 years.

~~~
csallen
_> At this point in my tech career, I could start a company, but how am I
going to support myself while that company is getting off the ground?_

You're a developer working at Bay Area tech companies? Move somewhere cheaper
(or don't!) and take contract jobs. Set your own schedule, work 15 or 20 hours
a week, and you'll be able to afford rent, even in expensive SF. Spend your
free time starting your company.

Alternatively, save up your money and take a year or two off.

Source: I've successfully taken both approaches.

~~~
iamleppert
It’s not the point, the point is risk and opportunity cost. In order to “save
up money” like you said means I need to make a lot of sacrifices in the here
and now for a future risk. People with money don’t have to sacrifice.

If the business fails, I’ll be out all that money and time that I can never
get back. People with money may just have to trade in their Tesla for a Range
Rover.

~~~
csallen
Of course entrepreneurship requires risk-taking and sacrifices. I don't think
anyone is surprised or upset by that. In fact, it'd be bizarre if there were
any alternative to working full-time that we couldn't say the same about. It's
not so different than, say, going back to college.

But the fact is that many millions of average people can afford to make these
sacrifices and take these risks. Your initial comment heavily implied that
this is only something the rich can afford to do.

------
nickjj
From the article:

 _> When you know you have a safety net, you are more willing to take risks._

Maybe to a certain degree, but not really.

Not having a safety net is what makes you more likely to succeed because
there's no "well, if this doesn't work out at least I live in a mansion and my
family has enough millions of dollars to live however I want to a realistic
degree for the rest of my life".

When you have no access to money, you have a special kind of drive. It's the
drive that says "look, working a regular job for the next 40+ years is going
to drain your soul -- either bust your ass and figure out how to do what you
want, or suffer for the rest of your life". The alternative is so awful that
you'll do anything to avoid it (assuming you want to be someone who starts
their own business).

This is coming from the POV of knowing with 100% certainty I was not made out
to work a regular job since I was 11 years old and my family has no money.

~~~
cheez
> When you have no money, you have a special kind of drive. It's the drive
> that says "look, working a regular job for the next 40+ years is going to
> drain your soul -- either bust your ass and figure out how to do what you
> want, or suffer for the rest of your life". The alternative is so awful that
> you'll do anything to avoid it.

Ironically, what you fail to see is that this line of thought is only possible
under two circumstances: rock bottom, or born to money. An unemployed 30 year
old in between would give their right arm to have a job for 40 years.

~~~
nickjj
> Ironically, what you fail to see is that this line of thought is only
> possible under two circumstances: rock bottom, or born to money. An
> unemployed 30 year old in between would give their right arm to have a job
> for 40 years.

I wasn't born into money and I never hit rock bottom. I worked a few part time
non-technical jobs as a teenager before I really got into computers and
quickly realized that there's a 0% chance I would be able to exist in a world
where I was reporting to someone every day for 40+ years in hopes they keep me
employed. That lifestyle just isn't for me.

I was lucky enough to find computers in my late teens and programming is
something I very much love doing so I made a freelance career out of it for
the last ~20 years and still do it today (because I like it).

That drive to work for yourself is not tied into having a safety net. It's a
mindset and maybe genetic (I have no idea). Most of my related family works
for someone else though, so it's not like I'm coming from 10 generations of
entrepreneurs here.

I think it's more of a mindset because I don't do this for the money. If we
lived in a world where you could somehow survive comfortably with no income I
would still try to make my own business doing whatever I really enjoyed doing.
The primary output of what I do to me isn't money, it's personal enjoyment and
the satisfaction of helping others.

> An unemployed 30 year old in between would give their right arm to have a
> job for 40 years.

And this is where the problem lies. Unless you're super skilled working at a
company that is massive and will never run out of funds then there's
practically a 0% chance you'll have a guaranteed steady job for 40 years. You
might get a few years or a decade even in some places but it's never
guaranteed. The only thing that's mostly guaranteed is you will get paid your
salary for a span of a single pay check duration or perhaps any duration you
pre-define in a contract. After that, you're hoping that the business you work
at stays in business and you are doing your job well enough not to get laid
off.

~~~
cheez
Please don't take my short response to think that I did not value your
comment. It was obviously well thought out.

> I was lucky enough to find computers in my late teens

25 years ago?

You still don't get it... 25 years ago, how many people could afford to "find
computers" in their late teens?

"Coming from money" doesn't mean you are institutionally wealthy. It means
that you have access to opportunities others don't and failure isn't even
visible to you. When you have no idea of the consequences of failure, you are
able to take risks. For me, I have personally (unfortunately) been involved
with some bad people but were it not for my inability to understand what
failure is, I would never have recovered and there would be a pretty
unfortunate cycle starting with me.

You have not dissuaded me from that perspective at all. Indeed, all you have
said is "I was successful and didn't want to be a slave like the others in my
family". But you never saw failure. You never wanted a safety net. Perhaps you
used one and you didn't even know it.

So what in your life would have made you afraid to take risks?

~~~
nickjj
> You still don't get it... 25 years ago, how many people could afford to
> "find computers" in their late teens?

In the public high school I went to they had a computer program, so I had
access to that which helped. There's also the public library too. Although in
my case I was able to eventually get a computer at home but it took a lot of
saving. Also in the mid / late 1990s computers started to come down a lot in
price compared to the early 90s.

But really, nowadays it's a totally different world so my specific situation
doesn't matter. You can grab a decent laptop for $350ish. You could work a
summer job to afford that while still going to high school, or a part time job
for a few months. There's also an endless amount of free (or paid) tutorials
on a ton of technical topics.

> So what in your life would have made you afraid to take risks?

I'm not smart enough to answer that question because I can't figure out what
you're asking.

But I will leave you with, of course having a base line of family security is
helpful. For example if your parent(s) are employed and you are able to have
food, clothes and electricity then you have an advantage over someone who
lives on the street but the article made it seem like you need "family money,
an inheritance, or a pedigree and connections that allow for access to
financial stability" to run your own business. To me that's much more than the
basics. When I read that, I read that as coming from a family where your
parents probably make 350k+ year and there's 5+ million in a low risk trading
account or something that can be liquified on demand.

That's a totally different world from a family living paycheck to paycheck but
can still save a little bit here and there. That type of family is more in
tuned with how I was brought up. It was always a struggle with a lot of
sacrifices, but it was never "bad bad".

~~~
cheez
Sure, the key point in the article is very early on:

> And this is a key advantage: When basic needs are met, it’s easier to be
> creative; when you know you have a safety net, you are more willing to take
> risks.

Your (and my) basic needs were met. In the USA, 40% of families could not meet
a $500 surprise expense. That's not paycheck to paycheck, that's pretty close
to the edge and such a family would generally be averse to rocking the boat.

The ability to take risks is very important for success, but what that really
translates to for entrepreneurs is an inability to believe failure is a thing.

So again, you did not have an upbringing that would make you afraid to take
risks, therefore you took them.

I had an upbringing that made me afraid to take risks because even though my
father was well off, his upbringing was during wartime. I took risks anyway,
and my kids are basically rich kids in that they are unafraid to go after
everything they want. It's very strange to see.

------
User23
There are rather a lot of confounds here. I don't really want to get too much
into that because it's a rathole of speculation, but if there were a gene for
risk, and if risk taking made people more likely to accumulate wealth, then
being descended from parents with money might lead to an inheritance of both
financial assets and some polygenic entrepreneurial genotype.

Honestly though, that's missing the point. There are plenty of persons with a
high appetite for risk who end up as burglars, robbers, embezzlers,
fraudsters, or some other unsavory and largely unsuccessful or net destructive
career. In my observation there are two _essential_ traits for a successful
entrepreneur: persistence and creativity. Everyone knows what persistence is,
but I mean creativity in a broader sense than just art. Anyone who has read
Julian May's marvelous Saga of Pliocene Exile will know what I mean. For those
who haven't, creativity is essentially the ability to create. Every successful
entrepreneur has by definition created something of value. Since as far as we
know all traits are heritable, creativity must be heritable as well. However
it's an even more subtle and ephemeral quality than intelligence, so I doubt
we'll be able to identify the genetic basis of creativity within our
lifetimes. By this I mean that while it is at least somewhat possible to
synthetically test intelligence, there is no test for creativity other than
reality itself.

I actually believe that for the sufficiently creative individual, risk is a
non-factor. I have had the privilege of knowing a few people of this type, and
they literally can't really fail. Sure, one enterprise might not work out, but
these folks are just a wellspring of ideas plus execution. They could be dead
broke and they'd still succeed in building things.

~~~
lonelappde
> burglars, robbers, embezzlers, fraudsters, or some other unsavory

is compatible with being a successful entrepreneur. Common wisdom says it's
essential, even.

------
WheelsAtLarge
I don't think people can really understand how risk-averse poverty can make a
person.

When you don't have a safety net or you've always had to struggle to get by
it's very hard to take chances with money. Of course, there are exceptions but
given poor vs rich, I would bet that entrepreneurs are more likely to appear
in the population that never had to struggle to get by.

------
garchee
The MANY entrepreneurs with broke immigrant parents (me included) would
probably disagree.

It doesn't hurt to come from money, and get a small loan of a million dollars,
sure. But more important than that luck is being resilient and having stoic
ideals, and that's something most Americans including the author of this
article lack nowadays. It's very easy to constantly put yourself in a victim
position and complain about how your life is harder than that of others, but
that's mostly just self destructive as it wastes intellectual and mental
energy you could instead spend on something more productive.

------
alexmlamb2
As predicted, the article doesn't contain any genome wide association study to
back up its claim in the title that entrepreneurs "don't have a gene for
risk".

Instead they present another causal factor for creating startups and just
implicitly deny that other factors exist.

I think Quartz is basically the archetype of fake news at this point.

------
augstein
I often think about this. If my parents (solid middle class) hadn‘t paid for
my studies and if they wouldn’t have had the means to support me for the time
after that, when I started a company which took about two years to sustain
itself (and me), I would probably still crunch out code somewhere as a low
level dev.

Thanks mom and dad!

~~~
MRD85
Neither of my parents finished high school and didn't value education but they
did value hard work and they encouraged me to get a trade. I joined the
military, got a trade there, and now in my early/mid 30's I'm completing a CS
degree.

Working for others isn't such a bad life if you have the drive to establish a
life that you want for yourself.

------
WalterBright
I personally know many that did not. Including refugees from other countries
who arrived with nothing.

~~~
coldtea
The fact that some can win in entrepreneurship playing the game in hard mode,
doesn't negate that most winners still play in easy mode (coming from money).

It just means that it's not impossible to win in entrepreneurship starting
poor. But then again nobody said it is: the article says it's just much harder
and thus less common.

Here's what TFA says:

"University of California, Berkeley economists Ross Levine and Rona Rubenstein
analyzed the shared traits of entrepreneurs in a 2013 paper, and found that
most were white, male, and highly educated. “If one does not have money in the
form of a family with money, the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop
quite a bit,” Levine tells Quartz. New research out this week from the
National Bureau of Economic Research (paywall) looked at risk-taking in the
stock market and found that environmental factors (not genetic) most
influenced behavior, pointing to the fact that risk tolerance is conditioned
over time (dispelling the myth of an elusive “entrepreneurship gene“)."

It says nothing about there NOT being people who've made it in startups coming
from a poor background. It merely says those are way less compared to males,
that are highly educated and with family money.

~~~
WalterBright
> most were white, male, and highly educated.

That doesn't mean they have money. Most PhD students appear to be scraping by
on a stipend provided by the university, not zipping to campus in their
Lambos.

One founder I know personally who's a wealthy man today drove a wretched
Datsun for a decade as he had nothing while he worked for his PhD.

~~~
coldtea
That's precisely what it means, there are not that many "highly educated"
people without family money...

Besides, you seem to have ignored the "If one does not have money in the form
of a family with money, the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop quite a
bit" part...

~~~
WalterBright
> there are not that many "highly educated" people without family money

I don't buy that. I know lots of PhD's with no family money. In fact, modern
complaints are about PhD's deeply in debt from student loans.

------
refurb
If having a fall back plan is what drives entrepreneurship, you’d expect the
firm safety net countries in the EU to have far more of it than a country like
the US.

Yet we don’t.

~~~
coldtea
Actually we do.

Several European countries have as many or more entrepreneurs than the US.
It's just that in Europe it's small self-owned/family businesses, not
Facebooks and Theranoses.

"In 2016, about 5.6 million small business employers and 24.8 million non-
employers were counted in the United States"

compared to:

"There were estimated to be approximately 24.5 million small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union in 2017, with the vast majority of
these enterprises micro-sized firms which only employed fewer than nine
people. A further 1.42 million enterprises were small firms with between 10
and 49 employees and 231 thousand were medium-sized firms that had 50 to 249
employers."

~~~
bwb
Just want to back this up, entrepreneurship has been falling since the 1970s
in the USA, it is actually pretty scary to see the graphs and data around
this, some good studies below showing some of these trends (EIG has some great
data on that + the ramifications for the American workforce):

[https://eig.org/dynamism](https://eig.org/dynamism) (great report)

[https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/the_entrepreneurship_...](https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/the_entrepreneurship_rate_has_fallen_by_almost_half_for_workers_with_a_bach)

------
josefrichter
A "garage startup" is the silicon valley's symbol of romantic start "from
zero". Fun fact though: most people around the world, even middle-class (by
local standards), simply can't afford a garage.. So if your family owns one,
you indeed come from a family with money.

~~~
mrep
I'm sorry what? Open up zillow and you can find plenty of houses with garages
pretty much everywhere in the US that the middle class can afford. Here is one
in the suburbs of chicago [0].

[0]: [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/207-Lafayette-Dr-
Bolingbr...](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/207-Lafayette-Dr-Bolingbrook-
IL-60440/5400388_zpid/)

~~~
josefrichter
I explicitly wrote "around the world".

------
BuckRogers
This is mostly true but not always. I was given nothing from anyone, and had
an extremely hands off manner of being raised. Meaning I was taught nothing
and given no encouragement. I definitely would've been in a gang if I had been
born in a big city as I was very aggressive and a tough kid. Thankfully I was
from a small town, and my excellent community saved me.

That said it took me until I was 36 to have the money to take any
entrepreneurial leaps. It took me that long to save up enough money. Working
in bad conditions that most kids with money would never put up with.

I'm not special in any way except my character is rare, resilient.

I wouldn't join in being resentful towards rich kids but I do recognize the
need to force the wealthy to pay a lot more in taxes to give others like me
and the worse off, a chance to succeed.

That's what we all owe to the society that enabled our wealth. Some owe more
than others, as their wealth increases.

------
bamboozled
I feel said type of founders having much less chance of becoming strong
leaders. Anecdotally, I've worked with founders who have their parents wealth
to fall back on take their position a lot less seriously than those who have
nothing to go back to.

The situation I mentioned creates a high friction situation sometimes, in
which those who work under rich founder (without many prospects outside the
company) start to actually take the potential for success seriously, while
rich founder is oblivious to poor management and bad decisions having any
serious implications for themselves longer term.

It would be interesting to see a survey done on this actually, even more
interesting would be to work for a company where consequences of action matter
more.

------
cody3222
What a terrible article. Think of how many would-be founders read this and see
it as an excuse not to start. Not to mention it takes credit away from all the
founders who don't come from wealth.

~~~
WalterBright
> Think of how many would-be founders read this and see it as an excuse not to
> start.

None. None of the founders I know were influenced by the endless stream of
people telling them they couldn't possibly succeed. The people who aren't
founders justify it with an endless stream of excuses.

------
jacques_chester
The usual argument has broken out that yuh-huh and nuh-uh and there will be
salvoes of anecdotes screaming into previously-entrenched opinions.

The thing is: some founders come from privileged backgrounds. They have
nothing to fear, so they take big chances.

Some come from unprivileged backgrounds. They have nothing to lose, so they
take big chances.

My guess? Both of these types of people will be over-represented, compared to
the general population.

In any case, after two clicks, it's possible to read the original paper
everyone was hanging their blog posts off at the time:
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w19276.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w19276.pdf)

The same authors have continued to work on the population characteristics of
entrepreneurs:
[http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/ross_levine/Papers/SES_FULL...](http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/ross_levine/Papers/SES_FULL_26042019.pdf)

------
garmaine
Does the author even know what genetics are? I was expecting some sort of
study of adopted kids and risk taking behavior to control genes vs
environments. Instead the author doesn’t seem to realize that entrepreneurs
coming from families with means is hardly evidence against the genetic
argument, and in fact supports the opposite view.

------
orasis
How does _family_ background disprove _genes_?

~~~
lonelappde
Jeff Bezos was adopted.

~~~
plumeria
He was adopted by his step dad. However, his (biological) mother came from an
educated family: “Bezos is the maternal grandson of Lawrence Preston Gise, a
regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuqurque”. -
Wikipedia

------
buboard
> in a 2013 paper, and found that most were white, male, and highly educated.

> Research (paywall) looked at risk-taking in the stock market and found that
> environmental factors (not genetic) most influenced behavior

how does one reach the conclusion of the title from these 2 very distinct data
points? It's nonsense. Plus there is a very wrong causation argument being
made for the first one. This is worse than clickbait

------
MickerNews
This won't go down well with the temporarily embarrassed Donald Trumps on this
website.

~~~
dang
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait here?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
18pfsmt
Can you explain why this comment is flagged?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20545221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20545221)

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills of late. I understand you all may be
dealing with unprecedented volume, but I hope you can address egregious
ridiculousness when it occurs. I'm willing to acknowledge my shortcomings (I
have many), but I would like to understand the fundamental errors of my ways.

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aristophenes
This article seems to be a "no true Scotsman" argument. The paper that it is
based on,
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w19276.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w19276.pdf)
, divides entrepreneurs into two groups, those with incorporated businesses
and those with unincorporated businesses. Then says those with unincorporated
businesses don't count. And then draws conclusions about entrepreneurs based
on only the incorporated ones.

Of course unincorporated businesses are limited in size and complexity.
Incorporated businesses are going to be made by people familiar with lawyers,
business practices, etc. Businesses that require large amounts of capital are
more likely to be incorporated. People who actually incorporate their business
I suspect are more likely to have had a good education.

So yes, if you exclude all the people who are just hustling along with all the
mom and pop businesses, then it seems to be that richer people are what is
left.

The article also mentions that both incorporated and unincorporated
entrepreneurs were more likely to engage in illicit activities in their youth.
So it seems the lede of the article is not supported at all.

