I think many starts ups are "rich people" self funding (or are parental funded). For instance Microsoft and Bill Gate's and Paul Allen's helped them out a lot. Ditto with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk's Tesla & Space X, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. You'll notice everyone aforementioned attended an Ivy League university.
At the very least Berkshire Hathaway is an odd example to be pointing out as a "self funded startup". Warren Buffett was an apprentice under Benjamin Graham for several years, operated several businesses beforehand to make his first millions and acquired the (heavily failing at the time) textile operations of Berkshire Hathaway around 1962, when Berkshire was already over a hundred years old.
He raised a couple million (inflation adjusted) from family and friends, starting with an old auntie. And taking over the textile operation of Berkshire Hathaway almost bankrupted him :)
The Buffet we think of today really emerged with meeting Charlie Munger.
Elon Musk did not found Tesla. He joined later after making an investment.
Founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors, the company's name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. In February 2004, via a $6.5 million investment, X.com co-founder Elon Musk became the largest shareholder of the company and its chairman. He has served as CEO since 2008. [0]
But Musk had to cry about it and sued to be able to be called a co-founder:
"A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five – Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk, and Straubel – to call themselves co-founders."
That seems like a very pedantic distinction. Large scale investment and a leadership position within the first 9 month of company creation seems like a “founder” to me.
IBM... Oracle... Palantir much more so, I mean Tesla figured out how to sell EV credits (that were intended for the Big 3), but SpaceX only recently got government funding after crushing all the competition by their bootstraps. It seems like Elon got his early money from parents and Paypal not the government.
I do however notice a general trend of seeing Libertarians on the dole.
SpaceX got a couple million dollars in direct subsidies over the years [1], the really interesting question is if one also counts the various government-bought services and other incentives (particularly for F9):
- Falcon 1 development was privately funded, but would it have succeeded without DoD/DARPA funding the first three launches of it? [2]
- Falcon 9 development was aided by hundreds of millions of dollars in seed money, not to mention the billions of dollars worth of launch contracts [3]
Sure. But the discussion was about "rich people self funding", with him as an example.
I have a couple ideas I would happily self-fund with the state's mid-10 digit assistance.
> I do however notice a general trend of seeing Libertarians on the dole.
If nothing else, it must help with finding the time to write freedom screeds.
More seriously, just about every rich person will tell you all about their bootstraps. I just wish fewer were crass enough to whine so loudly about others getting similar, ah, bootstrap assistance, to theirs.
