I suspect this is a reasonably common origin story. Plenty of people hate waste, and the ones who have some level of wealth or power just happen to be more readily positioned to act on solving it.

For what it’s worth, I was able to start Framework to combat e-waste because I was financially in a position to do so.

There are plenty of wealthy frugal people, they just don't get talked about much since they aren't as exciting.

Also often people who have tons of wealth start divesting it once they realize they have too much. And again a "could have been a dozens of millionaire but just a millionaire" doesn't make engaging content.

Warren Buffet still lives in the same smallish house he bought in the 60s.

The CEO of Ikea famously uses both sides of each sheet of paper on his desk.

"Smallish" his Omaha house is about triple the size of the average modern American home, and he bought it in 1958 when homes were much smaller than today!

I’d never heard this about Warren Buffet and so looked it up out of curiosity. I’m going to be honest, I hesitate to call it “smallish” for the average American (around 6500 sq ft). But I’ll admit it’s smaller and more modest than most homes owned by billionaires. At least according to my brief search, it’s the only house he owns, too.

He's remodeled it many times and put on additions (I think).

> Warren Buffet still lives in the same smallish house he bought in the 60s.

50s, not 60s. And it's a bad counterexample. Warren Buffett is 93 years old. (Or to put it another way, Warren Buffett is old enough to have bought a house in the 50s. I'm discussing the differences between then and now: people who _might_ be 50, but definitely weren't alive in the 50s, let alone buying a house.)

I think there is cultural divide between manufacturing, retail and such industries and tech or others. In first category being frugal and efficient makes lot of difference in long run. And in the later signalling has lot of value specially when VC is involved, but also later.

There's certainly a cultural divide between industries, but I don't see frugality showing up in the discrepancies. I don't live in the Bay Area, and most people in my sphere of acquaintances who live on the middle-class+ plane aren't getting paid to write software (or trying to) let alone chasing VC money, and none of the people that I interact with most frequently are. (Anecdotally, the software people actually seem more willing to voice positions that align with frugality. Developers are notorious for not wanting to pay for tools, for example.)