"Some experts say you are American middle class if you made between $51,200 to $153,000 in 2020."

what was the middle class income in the year that Bezos got the money?

I guess it seems reasonable to say though that actual median middle class is around 100,000 so the parent poster's question remains, where are they going to get the money. Well probably take a loan on the house for their son's crazy new-fangled internet scheme I guess, that seems unlikely.

So practically speaking, a small syndicate of middle class families (4-5) could reasonably found Amazon. Probably not one alone. Although I echo corndoge in that anyone describing 50-150k as the middle class income range is being polite rather than realistic about what what the class is.

Would 4-5 families really pool all their savings for 10 years to invest in one childs potential business?

Maybe. I think what is more likely is that 250k would represent a portion of the money a family could save and then put at risk. I would say this adds another order of magnitude on the earnings needed to be able to do this.

So I don't think it's worth quibbling over whether 50k or 100k is middle class. To do this I honestly think your parental income needs to be $1M+ a year.

yep, it sure would be possible in theory. Although in practice I don't think that's how it is for most people.

Also in a range of 50 - 150k obviously you have to assume that 50k is in the poorest parts of the country, and of course there is nothing saying that only nuclear families or larger can be middle class so I guess, a young single guy could be middle class.

so let's say

https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/how-much-to...

California $111,206 $80,440

Tennessee $50,629 $56,071

In the case of Tennessee you might be earning enough at 50k a year to be ok, but it seems unlikely that in your region and class you will be getting the chance to invest in Amazon.

on edit: the money per year, first number middle class income in region, second number median income in region

It was a bit over the top, but uncomfortably close to the truth.

At any rate a family I am going to suggest a family of three with 120,000 a year is probably around the same as young single guy with 50,000 a year. Which is just barely middle class.

I don't think the barely middle class is investing in anything (except for the ones with superhuman discipline, which I know some), and the ones who are actually in the middle of the middle class probably aren't going to have enough to fund early Amazon either, my disagreement was basically with the opinion that the middle class was much higher than 50k.

However, IIRC his parents came on as investors in the same round at the same term as other non-family investors. So really it may have been more like Bezos giving his parents access to the deal of the century rather than his parents giving a leg up to Jeff.

This did not pass the sniff test for me, so I plugged $250k into usinflationcalculator.com, with a year of 1993. It came up with $486k. I think your estimates are off by a factor of 2 to 4.

I think the sort of person that just has that amount of available cash stretches most definitions of "Middle Class".