Is getting rich young only for celebrities now, not entrepreneurs?
When you look at young people getting wealthy today (talking millions before 25), they’re almost exclusively some type of celebrity: streamers, musicians, content creators, influencers, athletes. The entrepreneurship path seems to have largely disappeared from this equation. Even in tech, historically the fastest scaling industry for young founders, we’re seeing fewer and fewer young entrepreneurs making it big. And when they do exist, they’re increasingly less likely to be self-made. They often come from wealthy families, went to elite schools, or had significant connections to begin with.
The only contrary examples I can think of are: People who bought Bitcoin early and a handful of developers who created viral apps
Do you have a single shred of evidence to support this assertion, or are you just talking out of your ass?
It’s a question. With famous people, you see them, and making millions under 25 through entrepreneurship would pretty much have to be in tech. Building a tech company isn’t as easy or accessible as it used to be, well, it never really was, but anyway, so it’s just a question. Chill out.
C'mon bro, chill out. All I did was ask a question.
This is the easiest time in history to build a tech company.
The best of Gen z entrepreneurs are somewhat celebrities themselves, that is in their micro niches online through personal branding. If you’re able to create an incredibly sticky and high converting social media presence of 10-50k people, you can do anything IMO. Literally working on this myself right now and it’s an absolute game changer, although it takes years. Social gravity pays off in the long term with clients, partners, investors, employees, etc. Anyone who is in internet money as an equity owner right now know about this but the cucks on WSO are too busy riffing through spreadsheets to care about compounding attention.
Skill gap required to create a successful tech company has improved massively. Look at all the striver coding kids who have been doing it since 14... if they'd had those skills during when zuck was creating facebook, they'd be either a guaranteed CTO at some company or able to create virtually any saas product on their own. Now that all the low hanging fruit is gone (both in terms of technical innovation and business model) u need to be way more connected, or in reality, older, to get the same results.
exactly man, very well written answer. where are the opportunities then would you say other than those i mentioned ( entertainment and video games )?
Invest 100k and wait 50 years at 10.5 percent interest = 15 mil.
Now look up what happens when you multiply the 50 part by 2.
Bros just waffling
If we’re just gonna assume things, I’ll assume there are plenty of pre-25 people making millions on paper through starting businesses. They aren’t visible on normal social media, probably on linkedin.
ITS A QUESTION, i’m not assuming anything
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In my social circles (upper middle class), a lot of folks that are becoming wealthy expanded their family business or became very active in their parents' investments (real estate properties, small business ventures) and as a result, take a chunk of the return they get.
May sound weird but I know a few kids like this. One of them had a brief stint on Wall Street and seems very happy with his decision to go to the family business. Parents bought a much bigger house recently and he bought a NYC apartment unit.
That’s what I see too, very few self made individuals. I mean, I get it; wealth takes time to build.
Tbh I think you're wrong. I think the democratisation of information and globalisation has opened up a path to low level riches for many young people without requiring them to be a celebrity. Think about it, everyone's TAM is like at least a couple billion now. Need tiny market share in whatever you're doing to be successful. Yes some entrepreneurial alpha may have eroded but the world is much bigger than it used to be.
Obviously the reason why it is your impression that famous people are getting wealthier more often is because... Well they're famous.
It can’t just be anything, to reach multiple millions while still very young, the business model has to be highly scalable. You’re not going to get rich with something like plastic manufacturing at 25; maybe at 70, but not when you’re young. Scalable models, especially in tech, tend to be “winner-takes-all” and have gatekeepers (VC funding, elite networks, etc.). And with AI today, the technical and computational requirements are enormous. That’s just my point of view. I might be wrong.
A business doesn't have to be winner takes all in a massive TAM to be making millions. I mean, top of my head, take Ridge wallet or something.
That's a very big business, far beyond what we're talking about in this thread. But it probably doesn't even have double digit market share in the global wallets market. I'd argue it's not even HSD. (Did a quick Google search post this write and saw it was 1%!). They could be 1/20 of their size (that means not even half a %of market share) and still probably fall into the category of businesses big enough for this conversation. It's not impossible for a young person to create a business that size. Heck I don't even think ridge wallet founders are that old.
Easiest time ever to get rich young.
people love to say this but that’s just not true, there’s never been more competition than today.
Tbh your entire theory falls apart with this statement.
Your claim is that celebrities are more often than not the ones making millions these days. But let's break that down.
What are celebrities? Celebrities are basically walking attention magnets. They broke attention. Attention is a finite resource. So by saying that more celebrities are millionaires these days than other types, you're implying somewhat that there are more celebrities (i.e. more competition than ever) but they are somehow more successful than ever, despite competing for a finite resource. How is this possible?
Because although attention is a finite resource, it can also grow. For celebrities, attention is population × some "reach" factor (i.e. propensity to pay attention to celebrities in general and a specific celebrity) × total attention per person. Then there of course is the monetisation factor of said attention. Reach and monetisation can be grown and have grown. And this is why celebrities can expand their $TAM and more can be successful despite limited attention per person.
If that can be true for celebrities, then why too can it not be similarly true for other entrepreneurs? Monetisation factors (within industries) can grow. Reach (can think of this as accessibility of skills/info/ease of distribution) can grow too.
Your fundamental mistake here is you're using what you hear about as evidence for what is truth. This is obviously flawed for this exercise given that, for celebrities, your attention is their product - of course you're going to hear more about or see them being successful.
Yes, I should be clear. The capital requirements for getting rich have never been lower. The requirements in terms of talent or skill have never been higher.
all the people you see online are usually some sort of entrepreneurs :)
very true
Your definition of "wealthy" and "young" are incredibly restrictive, which is why you can only think of celebrities, athletes, tech entrepreneurs etc.. I mean at what point in history have there ever been more 25 year olds with net worths of $30-50mm+ other than today? The answer is never...A quick google search shows that the richest people to ever walk this planet were not wealthy at 25 (Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Buffet, Bezos, Musk, etc..) What skills or products can someone even attain or create by the age of 25? At 25 most people either just finished college or skipped college and went to vocational school or trade school. Your age constraint of 25 pretty much gives no time for anyone to achieve anything. What good or service could a 25 year old possibly provide? They can only provide goods and services that require very little skill or require very little investment i.e. entertainment or apps. It takes 0 skills or investment to make dumb videos on tiktok or youtube and it takes almost $0 to build a phone app. Every other industry requires either more skills, investment, or both.
I mean I could ask your same question but with even stricter parameters "When you look at ultra wealthy kids (under 14 with net worth of $50mm+) they're almost exclusively some type of youtuber. The entrepreneurship, pro-athlete, streamer, influencer, and musician paths seems to have largely disappeared from this equation..."
amazing answer !
And then you have the founders of Mercor and Cursor who became billionaires at 23.
they’re from elite backgrounds, not self made at all, plus it’s all paper money, it could crash anytime ( see: wework founder, holmes,…)
What are their backgrounds?
You think 23 year old billionaires are not self made?
Your logic is that someone from an elite background can NEVER be self made? Wow.
A celebrity also competes on a market based on popularity, views, and attention, so it is not different to being an entrepreneur which also has to compete in a market and deliver that which meets demand or grabs attention notwithstanding the quality or use of the product (eg. see Labubus, which are useless, but seem to have gained lots of attention).
I will also say that being a celebrity is way harder because it's extremely hard to keep people engaged long-term. You might grab some short-term attention because of your uniqueness, content, or whatever, but nowadays people are dopamine junkies, so they will quickly get bored and look for the next celebrity; but not with entrepreneurship, if your product is viable there goes an entire economic model on why someone might stick to your product (moat, costs to change, etc.)
overall entrepreneurship rules because it's open to anyone that has the time, patience, and resiliency to build something, meanwhike to be a celebrity it's a bit more random and luck dependant (good traits, amazing charisma, acting skills, etc.)
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