Good post but there are a couple of points I don't completely agree with:
> The people starting companies already have to be a bit delusional.
I do agree with this point!
> you have to be ultra privileged to be in a place that you're even thinking of starting a startup.
Not necessarily. I started my businesses in a shed in my parent's garden and got in to £20k of credit card debt. That's not really privilege, I put everything I (didn't have) on the line!
> Your investors are not going to be helpful here, neither are your friends, family or other founders.
I actually think other founders who are level or ahead of you in their startup are fantastically useful
Edit: Listening to the comments below about how I don't recognise my privilege - I totally get it - of course I do understand that relative to somebody who did not have a garden shed or a credit card to get in to debt with I was privileged. I'm not a total idiot nor am I ignorant that this is a form of privilege. It's just not Mum and Dad gave me a trust fund with £500k in it to go set something up - it's all relative and I appreciate my version of privilege was sufficient that I could take the first steps. Something that others won't enjoy, hence I am objectively privileged.
Having parents who are presumably supportive and can provide you with room and board and space to play around with your ideas makes it difficult to take the rest of the sentence seriously. In particular, lots of folks who support children, disabled spouses, ailing parents, and people with bad credit because they've been poor all their lives wouldn't have been able to do what you did
I don't generally find conversations around privilege to be useful since almost everyone is privileged compared to somebody else, and almost anything can be framed as privilege, so the term is very easily weaponized. At the same time, I think it's important to have awareness about the ways in which one can be privileged to someone else -- at least the large ways -- and parents can often be a very large way.
Not because you should feel guilty, but because it's very easy to lose sight of certain terms in the calculus of one's success, particularly the ones involving luck or help from others because it might feel like they minimize the contribution from your skills and blood/sweat/tears/creativity/appetite for risk/other stuff that you might be proud of. Mainly I think this stuff is important because I think self-awareness is important, and because I've found it helps with understanding and having more compassion for other people. That's all
Yes this was my insight into the comment also. To have parents is to have a safety net. That is often a privileged place to be that most people don't really understand. My parents are gone but I had savings that operated as my safety net and that was my place of privilege because most people do not have savings.
The most successful founders in the world had one of the two above if not more such as real wealth. Starting a company is a huge privilege but one that also requires an understanding that it ultimately becomes self sacrifice. To your employees, to your customers, to your investors. You get to chase your desires but must face the reality that you will only succeed if those are in service to others.
> Having parents who are presumably supportive and can provide
This is huge. I used to be very active in a sport that tends to attract rich people. Having myself grown up very poor, it was my fist window of visibility into that segment of society. I was always surprised by how many kids (in their 20s) were running startups as founders.
On one hand, they were living the full sacrifice. Taking no salary, living in a cramped apartment with cofounders, working so hard. So if any of them made it (I lost track), they did work for it and sacrificed.
But until I got to know them a bit better I always wondered how they're able to take on so much risk? What if it didn't work out? Having grown up poor I've always been hyper-aware of financial risk of every decision so I couldn't understand this.
The answer is that for them there was no risk. It was always a variant of "Dad is paying my apartment and food and gave me four years to give this a go, if it doesn't work out I'll shut down the startup and he'll hire me into his company".
I suspect a key word in the phrase GP was reacting to is "ultra". Is it some level of privilege to have parents lend you an outdoor shed's worth of space for your startup while you go $30K into credit card debt? Sure. Is that "ultra-privileged"? I don't think so.
It's all relative. Compared to many that is "ultra" privileged. I'm almost 30 and I can't even access a line of credit for 30k of debt because of stuff that happened earlier in life without having my parents as a safety net. So everything I have done on my own has been just after work using money that could be going to rent, savings, investments, new technology, etc.
I also have a high level of privilege because my upbringing allowed me to have unmetered access to a computer at 14 landing me a good programming job when I dropped out of college. So from the perspective of someone who didn't even have the opportunities I had, looking into the life of someone who started a company from a shed while living in their parent's house, it would appear "Ultra" Privileged. (I have plenty of friends from where I grew up that didn't even have support from their parents when they were 14-16, working after school to pay rent because their parents either died, or were too deadbeat to consistently make rent)
People who get financial help their parents are ultra ultra privileged then?
Ultra means extremely. You were saying that simonswords82 was extremely privileged. In the US, (edit: Europe) having parents and a garage is somewhat common, though, I think.
Alternatively you could say that you were unprivileged, and he privileged (without ultra).
I've been running a business for 25 years. On the outside it would appear I am self taught, self funded and built it all myself. I don't like to argue privilege in most cases but as I get older I have to say I do recognize things I had access to that gave me the ability to do this, where someone with the same drive simply could not. Back in the 90s as a teenager my parents bought a family computer (which would have been thousands), got access to the internet which at some point was long distance phone calls only, and kept it after I ran up a phone bill in the hundreds of dollars. I also built my business on open source software. We all build up from others work. Not everyone has understanding parents, some perhaps would have internet cancelled, or worse for running up such a large bill. My parents were not at all wealthy at the time. We don't control the cards we are dealt and I think arguing privilege is a lost cause. What we should do is if we get to a point where we can do it, try help give more opportunities to everyone.
Guessing you are in Europe though? Credit is pretty freely handed out in the US. At some point you have to ask for lower limits if anything. Getting .5-1x your yearly salary in credit card limit by 30 isn’t hard in the US, for example.
And 20k GBP will buy a lot more in your EU country than in the UK.
You know that your startup doesn’t need to target the US/UK/English speaking world right? You can launch a service or product in your EU country and, similar to the cost of living difference, your capital requirements will be much smaller.
I suppose that, over simplified, a startup in the US or UK can choose whatever to target in the whole world, whilst a startup in a poorer country might afford to target only poorer countries? (as its first step)
> The people starting companies already have to be a bit delusional.
I do agree with this point!
> you have to be ultra privileged to be in a place that you're even thinking of starting a startup.
Not necessarily. I started my businesses in a shed in my parent's garden and got in to £20k of credit card debt. That's not really privilege, I put everything I (didn't have) on the line!
> Your investors are not going to be helpful here, neither are your friends, family or other founders.
I actually think other founders who are level or ahead of you in their startup are fantastically useful
Edit: Listening to the comments below about how I don't recognise my privilege - I totally get it - of course I do understand that relative to somebody who did not have a garden shed or a credit card to get in to debt with I was privileged. I'm not a total idiot nor am I ignorant that this is a form of privilege. It's just not Mum and Dad gave me a trust fund with £500k in it to go set something up - it's all relative and I appreciate my version of privilege was sufficient that I could take the first steps. Something that others won't enjoy, hence I am objectively privileged.