The parent comment is a cute little story that makes people feel better, without any actual facts, so there's not really anything to prove or disprove.

But no, they meant that not having unlimited funds meant having to be creative or having to focus on business ideas where huge budgets were unnecessary.

The point the GP was refuting- that middle class kids only get one throw - is also not an actual fact.

I'll take their assessment of their life ("lived experience" in modern parlance) over a bad analogy any day.

The point the original comment was making is that richer kids get more throws. The particular number 1 was used to highlight the magnitude of this difference. If you read it literally, then sure, it isn't true of all edge cases.

And the refutation was that the "number of throws" matters less than the scale of risk they took on each "throw", hence why I said it was a bad analogy. If the point of the original comment is that rich people have more money, then I'm not really sure what was worth pointing out.

I think status (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35400562 ) is a bigger deal than personal risk. Status lessens personal risk, by getting buy-in from others.

This can work even with poor people who have connections and status within their community.

Status not only gets buy-in from others for business operations, but gets buy in from customers, which is required for any business to survive and thrive.

I've had Adam Neumann, in particular, in mind while reading this thread. He famously had multiple shots. Some of these may have been while just a child of the upper middle class, but his most recent big ones were because of his connection to status within the upper class.

It's kind of like the failing upward of executives of broken companies. Once you get past a certain level of status it's really, really hard to lose it all so much that you can't get buy in from others.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/wework-...

> What distinguished Neumann, along with his ambition, was “his connection to capital,” Wiedeman writes. Neumann had married Rebekah Paltrow, a wealthy cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow and a kabbalah devotee. She invested part of a $1 million nest egg in WeWork and introduced her husband to Manhattan’s Kabbalah Centre, where he met other well-off backers.

I don't understand your logic. I was middle class, and could afford more than one throw. The assumption in the OP was that a middle class kid can only afford one throw, which wasn't true, in my case.

I was fortunate, because I knew better than to "throw" all of my money at an opportunity, not because I wasn't middle class.

Could you have afforded more than one throw, if your first throw had missed? If it had missed so badly you figuratively hit a bystander with the dart, and now owed more than you had originally put in (microbusinesses aren't typically protected under limited liability)?

I had some pretty clear failures when I was starting out, but they didn't cost much money beyond web hosting, a domain name, and some wasted time. Sure, you can always worry about some existential risk, such as causing real harm you're liable for. But that's starting to sound like an excuse not to take action.

My main point is that it is actually possible start a business with almost no risk and almost no capital. Not that you'll succeed. And if you don't that's OK.

Failure is an option, and if you're smart, it's an option you can easily recover from.

Honestly, I think I learned half of this attitude from playing competitive video games in the late 90s. You just keep trying stuff. If it doesn't work, you can do another round. (Gah -- I'm in awe of how much free time I used to have.)

Programming may be an exceptional exception to this then. Perhaps other industries such as marketing are too.