It's often not all that hard to disguise one as the other. I worked for a guy once who was drowning in family wealth and all he had to show for it was a failing business.

After years of losses that almost nobody else would have been able (or willing) to sustain he made it into a moderate success.

Outwardly, at face value, he's doing pretty well, until you count the decade of losses which nobody talks about.

Another friend is a moderately renowned documentary maker. Again, facilitated by family wealth. Outwardly, the appearance is of being successful, which cost a fair chunk of family wealth.

I think in both cases, family wealth drove something akin to an obsession to appear successful, which they largely achieved and nobody mentions the uncomfortable facts about how they got there in polite company.

Microsoft's division that made X-Box {,360,One} was in the red for years as well and lost billions before it made its first profit (I think it's now profitable overall, but I wouldn't be surprised if it actually didn't yet return all the money put in to it through the years).

Almost nobody else would have been able (or willing) to sustain the costs that made it into a success.

What matters is the bottom line.

Failing is part of the learning-Process.

With more money can of course learn to fail in greater scale, but IMHO this also has benefits in it's own. Learning to think big is a skill of it's own. Small business plays by different rules than big business, even if they have overlaps.

And I also think how succesfull you really were can only be said after staying on your peak for some time, because some games go really really long.

I like to think of this example [0] when I have the feeling that I got to where I am all by myself, and forget how many and how much others have worked to "build my boat", and how much luck was involved at every step.

[0] https://digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a...

That comic is brilliant.

That was great!

No, but starting with wealth makes it much easier to succeed at other things.