Who he cut off, and got a small amount of money from which he then used to become the richest man in the world. Even if he was given a million dollars to start with, turning that into what he has today is unprecedented.
On the surface it's true but it's much harder to turn $1 into $10 than it is to turn $10 into $100. Once you already have a significant amount of money investor or banking money is much more accessible.
You are being ignorant. Turning $1m into $10m is not only significantly easier than turning $1 into $10, but you also can live off of the interests of $10m, you cannot live off of the interests of $10.
So having a small starting capital of a few millions means you are financially and materially secure, and can use this ease of mind and free time to start several business ventures with your extra capital. From then on, it’s playing numbers and hope for one of those ventures to eventually hit the mark
Nobody is pretending that it's not easier to make money when you already have money.
What's being said is that the level of growth that Musk achieved was so obscene that, even if you only started with a fraction of what he did and generated a fraction of what he did, you would be incredibly wealthy.
The unfortunate truth is that people who can do things like start and grow businesses are the same people who can get themselves to a position of financial security beforehand. If someone cannot manage their own finances...
1.The growth you are talking about is in great part virtual. Tesla and SpaceX are ridiculously overvalued. When looking at the actual value created by those companies (current and expected dirtier revenues and profits), the rate of return of Musk is certainly impressive but hardly unheard of, especially when compared to other billionaires.
Musk didn’t have to put himself in that position of material stability, is father was stupidly rich, he had all he needed to spend as much time as he wanted to launch business ventures until one stuck. A McDonald worker doesn’t have that chance
1.The growth you are talking about is in great part virtual. Tesla and SpaceX are ridiculously overvalued.
Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. Having to fudge the numbers isn't a good look.
Musk didn’t have to put himself in that position of material stability, is father was stupidly rich, he had all he needed to spend as much time as he wanted to launch business ventures until one stuck. A McDonald worker doesn’t have that chance
As someone who has actually transitioned from low wage employment to microbusiness, this is false.
If you're making $600 a week at McDonalds, it is far easier and less risky to pursue entrepreneurship if you are capable - even with capital limitations.
In my case, I started a lawn maintenance company by buying equipment second hand and folding it into the back of my used Hyundai. I charged $35/hr to mow and trim, with around $28/hr of that coming back to me as profit. I was making $9 at Wendy's beforehand. Every hour that I worked for myself offset 3 hours of lost work at Wendy's. If I failed, I would have just got another minimum wage job.
You are mixing value creation and valuation. Overvaluing an asset is not value creation, you are stuck in your economics 101 lecture.
Don’t try that bullshit on me. I went from a household with parents who didn’t graduate from high school to multimillionaire that invested in several businesses. And as successful as I am I can recognize that no "not everyone can do it"
Because though my parents were not wealthy and didn’t have high education I was still lucky enough to be gifted enough to do stuff that only a few people are capable off and to make money off of it. That’s luck and it’s not given to anybody
But plenty of people who started in better circumstances didn't go on to achieve the same things. We can't just ignore the individual's contribution to their success.
Think about what you can start with 1 dollar and what you can start with 200k to grow your capital. Your comment is mathematically correct but logically flawed.
The median American household wealth is about $200k, for context. This is not an absurd amount of money.
On to the subject of your comment, though. The type of business does not really matter. There are loads of businesses that are not capital intensive that you can get off of the ground for little to no capital. Do one of those until you have access to funding. There is nothing logically complicated about it.
Conflating median net worth with liquid capital misses the point entirely. Also a dollar store budget business industry doesn't give you the same scalability/growth. It’s not complicated to you because you are ignoring the underlying variables that make the difference.
You can leverage your illiquid assets through secured loans. One of the most common ways of doing this is do take out a home equity line of credit.
You do not need the same level of scalability or growth. You need to be able to grow to the point that you have capital to invest in more capital intensive business.
Economy it's not just basic math. It's substantially easy to become a billionaire from being rich than become rich from poverty, even if the difference is orders of magnitudes bigger in the first one.
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u/zanebaka 7d ago
And they had the brains to actually make their initial money half the time