Apparently some trust fund kid from my uni is now a CEO - I guess it's nice when your daddy buys you a startup for Christmas.
Makes me wonder if I wasted my good years working hard on my skills instead of getting myself a "daddy".

I used to be jealous of those people too.

Then I realised I'd prefer to work, build skills and earn a living any day rather than be a rich, stuck up CEO with no knowledge who likely has little real respect from anyone. Plus he'll probably bankrupt the business and hit rock bottom in a few years anyway.

@AlmondSauce He might fail, yes. But he won't face the consequences. His family will back him up.
I am jealous of this...security, this lack of worries. Falls are feather-soft for people like him.

@F1973 No, but he definitely has enough for a few tries.

@F1973 Not necessarily. His money might attract good people at some point, and they will make it work. It's a lot about luck and timing.
I've seen a lot of rich people since my dad worked in private banking. They managed to be successful without any particular skills.

I know a guy who spent high school starting businesses and crashing them. He did have family money to start with, but by now he has such a social capital that he can do it on his own. It's unfair, clearly, but he's honest and very keen on creating something of value, so frankly I'm glad he's the one born into that particular rich family and not one of the lazy fucks that make up the majority of society.

Beeing good with people and finding out where rich people frequent will get you far if you've an idea to sell.

It's unfair, indeed, but that's life.
He would probably end up draining his da's wallet then be kicked out of the family, disowned and stuff. And perhaps along the way, sink into the drug-addict hole. And who knows, he might end up like a skill-less person who has to work on super low entry jobs.

Excuse me but Trump started off with a small load of $1 million. Next you will be saying he had it easy smh.

@craig939393 Are you in trolling mood today? :)

Spoiler: He won't fail, he will quit

@NickyBones not just today :p

But yes heavy sarcasm... And I also have a trust fund but it's locked up for some tax reasons. I grew up poor and worked 2 jobs whilst studying from 14 so I'm looking forward to becoming the enemy.

@craig939393 I am far from poor, but will need to work for the rest of my life :)

@NickyBones it is easy to say, but one of my goals in life is to create specific, and possibly small, apps that have high fault tolerance in order to have low ongoing support. Monetize and get close to passive income.

At the moment I am studying every day and working as a software developer to achieve that, with or without trust fund money that falls from the sky.

My outlook might be naive though.

I would feel bad the most for the father who is too lazy and soft to teach his kid what is necessary to earn and manage a business successfully.

He will pay likely by getting his fortune drained or be at a big financial loss.

@PepeTheFrog Maybe the kid is getting some consulting from people who know their shit.

Well, combining both may be even a better solution 🤔

@craig939393 if your apps require no maintenance,what service will you sell then?

@iiii If there is a girl in the crowd who combined being a successful hoe with an engineering degree, I want to know your secrets!

@iiii I think it's impossible to not require any maintenance, but I'm we can imagine many services which have external dependencies and I believe these are the reason for interrupted service that requires manual intervention.

So if you are collecting data from an API, save all data and try to reuse it for estimates based on history (if possible), otherwise have a second dependency as a backup to fallback to, even of it doesn't offer the same rich feature set, reduce your feature set gracefully. I envision being flexible so that if something does go wrong it's not a huge immediate problem.

It is highly dependent on the product being built, but designing so that you can get the most amount of time before shit hits the fan.

@craig939393 but anyway, if it requires a little maintenance then what service would you sell if the thing basically "just works" after setting it up?

@iiii I don't want to say too much as I only have 1 idea for now. But basically it provides searches, and then integrates with an affiliate program for users to make purchases and monetize the app.

The searches can fall back to historical data, or different data providing APIs. And the search is a unique feature that I could not find offered anywhere else.

Sorry it's a bit vague. But yeah such a system I believe wouldn't take much maintenance, as long as the feature set is specific, a lot of effort was put into quality, fault tolerance, graceful feature fallbacks, and error logging and alerts to catch areas that need better tolerance.

Starting your own business is not just about the money. You can have all the sugar daddy money in the world, without a proper business model it will fail. There's accounting, taxing, building and then selling the product, and a million other things... Don't underestimate it. This is definitely not just about getting a blank check from someone.

Source: I have business plans of my own, using my own savings. And I didn't pay full price for my schooling either - but it's completely unrelated.

Edit: as far as "risk-free" goes, that couldn't be any further from the truth. As the business owner you take all the risks for that business. Depending on the model of the company (limited liability or full liability particularly) they might even come knocking at your house door if you go bankrupt. If anything I'd call it a gamble. And in the first few years, earning less than your peers that work for an employer, it's not even financially attractive. You'd earn less than a working employee.

@Condor It's all nice, but he has less chances of becoming homeless than me, if we both fail in our respective startups.

@NickyBones the answer to that is easy. You can only put into your business what you're prepared to lose (and short of dividends you can't take it back out either). That's why I saved up first (along with the old system here requiring an EBVBA to bring in €12.4k from the get-go, now it can be any amount). It's quite literally a high stake gamble. Assuming that your company has limited liability and there weren't serious management issues (limited liability ends there even for such companies) you'd lose the part that you brought in if you go bankrupt. If you can't afford to lose that, don't do it. It's extremely risky. Especially in the first few years it's tedious just to stay afloat.

Personally I wouldn't even do it for the money. I just want my own thing - my own product - that I can make rock solid and distribute. That's all.. just my own thing. If it's just for the money, it'd be much wiser to work yourself up at an existing company.

What a lucky bastard !
Well I remember quote from movie “Don’t worry, he won’t get far on foot”

- What’s that painting Donnie ?
Donnie:
- I don’t know... I got it same like I got all of this shit, inherited it.
It’s like...my grandparents were like...fucking really rich.
So, like, my parents grew up rich and then, like, I grew up really rich.
- It’s like, so stupid. It’s nice but it’s stupid.

@NickyBones I think your reflrction should be a tad different.

Most rich people don't know hardship.

By hardship I mean no food, maybe homeless (eg America where living in a car isn't unusual) and so on.

Hardship is a cruel teacher - but when time passed and wounds scarred, you've a new sense of value.

I think it would be nice to have money to spend like there's no tomorrow.

Except I would feel incredibly sad because I don't know why I got that money - it feels not like an achievement when you haven't worked for it.

The world of rich people seems sad and lonely to me - you're sitting in a golden cage.

@IntrusionCM That's a severe case of getting used to a shit situation. You don't have to earn everything. For instance, contrary to what Americans think, you don't have to earn healthcare. Yes, somebody has to produce that money, but that doesn't mean someone has to struggle. You pay upwards of 25% taxes on all your income, but your income is a fragment of the total value you produce. Taxes can produce useful things as well, not just high altitude reconnaissance aircraft capable of mach 6.

@homo-lorens I'm from Germany btw. ;)

And even here you can have these hardships.

German bureaucracy is a hardship itself...

And I do think that by paying taxes I've earned that privilege.

Edit: Privilege of eg free health care

It's never too late to start!

I tell myself that if I ever get my own company, I'll pay all employees (almost) equally and that my income won't be that much larger than theirs. Kinda like how Ecosia is rn, the CEO is not earning the highest income

@IntrusionCM I don't think I'd be incredibly sad if I was born beautiful - I'd think I got it from my family, just like being rich.
Would I enjoy being beautiful more if I was born ugly and had to go through numerous plastic surgeries to fix it? I don't think so.

@ars1 It is. At 30, you are already expired goods in the eyes of many men.

keep in mind the reason people starting life with money appear lucky is pretty plain - every new business you have to learn something new. Sometimes (a lot of times) you fail. In fact something like 90% of businesses fail in the first five years.
And of course you build something moderately successful, you eventually have to pivot, which also risks failure.

Basically money solves most of this. The longer your runway, the better you will be able to adapt (generally), faster, and with less need of skill or improvising or doing without whats needed. Money is also the ability to say no to bad deals, which can be *just as critical* to success. Theres a lot of good ones out there but also a lot of vulture venture capital, which like the world consuming villains of mass effect, see your little would be business the same way a whale views krill..as nothing more than part of their lifecycle to be consumed and eventually dumped when no longer valuable.

🌹

You are envious, not jealous

Welcome to reality. Some are born rich, some are born poor. You gotta deal with the cards you are dealt. Don't envy them.

don't worry, by the time he loses the third company he got as a gift, you'll be starting your first one that you actually deserved.

Sometimes I try to think of us all as part of the humans who create and share this society. In history's point of view, you are a little part of the trustfund kid, and he is a little part of you.