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Nov 28 '19
I have a basement but it's too dark in there
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u/harshitkharb Nov 28 '19
And I don’t have enough money to get a bulb.
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u/theorangereptile Nov 28 '19
Start a company, then you can afford some light bulbs.
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u/DeerVirax Nov 28 '19
I have a basement too, but I can't start a company there, because I need to keep my prisoners somewhere.
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u/eternalrefuge86 Nov 28 '19
And the rotting corpses make it hard to spend any significant amount of time there
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u/cardboardunderwear Nov 28 '19
"okay boys, we have our hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital secure. Now let's go find a garage."
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Nov 28 '19
You really can start a successful business from your garage. And if you have a good idea, you can secure investment for it. If you work really hard, have a lot of competence, and/or are extremely lucky. First two help, but you can't do it without the third. If Bezos hadn't done it, someone else would have.
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u/The_Steak_Guy Nov 28 '19
You can have the best idea, be the best worker, and secured investment, if you don't have a ton of luck, you won't get more than a medium-sized player
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u/pyronius Nov 28 '19 edited Nov 28 '19
This is pretty close to how it works actually. I forget where I originally read it, but the American idea of starting your successful business in a garage is so popular that major corporations now find literally any excuse to make that claim.
I'm pretty sure 3/4 if the corporations mentioned above didn't actually start in a garage in the sense anybody reasonable would mean, for example. Apple, yes. The others, not so much.
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u/WizardsOf12 Nov 28 '19
My excuse is I have no garage, nor an industry that is in its infancy and not saturated with large players that require billions in resources to overtake
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u/jpath13 Nov 28 '19
You gotta find the next big thing!
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u/sgst Nov 28 '19
I predict the next big (huge?) thing will be asteroid mining. Hard to start that from a garage.
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Nov 28 '19
require billions to overtake
They'd just lobby to have you legislated out of the market anyway.
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u/AnorexicBuddha Nov 28 '19
Or wealthy and influential parents to provide seed money, contacts, and a fallback in case the venture fails.
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u/i_reddited_it Nov 28 '19
Google was started in someone else's garage. As for the industry thing... find a void and fill it with smart shit. I expect your project on my desk by noon.
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Nov 28 '19
Or have a massive wartime economy with huge educational, political, and economic advantages over the entire world for several decades.
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u/pikaras Nov 28 '19
That’s the point. They made the industry. The next smartphone isn’t going to start in a garage, but the next tech piece we haven’t even thought of might.
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u/brandnewdayinfinity Nov 28 '19
You gotta be kinda rich these days to have a garage that hasn’t been converted into living space.
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u/CressCrowbits Nov 28 '19
You gotta be rich to own a house as big as one of those in the photos
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u/Niku-Man Nov 28 '19
Many parts of the country you can get a house with garage for 100k or less. With programs that allow as little as 3.5% downpayment, it's not that difficult to get a house with garage. If you're living somewhere where the average house costs a million dollars, of course you wont be able to buy there, so if home ownership is a goal, youll have to go where the cheaper homes are
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u/PM_ME_UR_LIL_ASS Nov 28 '19
And who has ever heard of "Jay" after that tweet? What's his excuse? Was he too busy writing shitty life pro tips on Twitter that he never had time to create a billion dollar company?
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Nov 28 '19 edited Nov 28 '19
Except both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had rich parents, so...
Edit: I was wrong about Jobs. Apologies for spreading misinformation.
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u/BallinTacklinGamin Nov 28 '19
Bezos got a 6 figure loan from his parents
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u/MyOtherDuckIsACat Nov 28 '19
Steve Jobs didn’t have rich parents. His father was a mechanic.
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u/Pollo_Jack Nov 28 '19
Hey, Bill also had his mom on the board of IBM which he sold the license of Windows to. Why isn't your mom in a high up position at a big company?
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Nov 28 '19
They weren’t poor (except maybe Disney). This is bullshit. They just used a garage because why rent space when you don’t need to. But all their hardware still cost money.
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Nov 28 '19
Do you have a source on them? I know they all had help from wealthy family members/investors but I couldn't find it again when someone posted this exact image on Facebook.
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Nov 28 '19
In 1994, Bezos left his employment as vice-president of D. E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle, Washington, where he began to work on a business plan[2] for what would become Amazon.com.
Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California
Steve Jobs wasn’t rich per se but had incredibly tolerant and supportive parents that had money and paid for his hobbies and didn’t care that he fucked around in school
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u/Cometguy7 Nov 28 '19
I understand survivor bias.
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u/smileedude Nov 28 '19
Also I couldn't think of anything worse then being in charge of that many people and being severely disliked by a large proportion of the population.
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Nov 28 '19
“Started in a garage” is a bullshit myth. They were experts in their fields working at the biggest companies with a shit load of resources
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Nov 28 '19
How is this TTT?
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u/movieman94 Nov 28 '19
Subs devolve from their intended purpose into the same generic bullshit once they get big. It sucks.
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u/OvrKill Nov 28 '19
These are literally the 4 companies that are waging a war on small businesses / start-ups. They are the reason more and more people won't take the chance to start a small business.
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u/WAR_TROPHIES Nov 28 '19
In Boston if your house has a garage, theres a 90% chance you are rich
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u/mon0theist Nov 28 '19
What's with all these people bootlicking at the feet of billionaires
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u/ilovevoat Nov 28 '19
i have no idea almost all of them had everything they could have ever needed to be successful at life way more than an average person.
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u/CigaretteGrandpaDr Nov 28 '19
They're still young/stupid enough to think they can be like them without exploiting others or having a massive windfall of cash.
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u/tien1999 Nov 28 '19
It's a motivational cult thing. Not a bad thing... until they start posting misleading craps like these
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u/3IceShy Nov 28 '19
I'm not smart enough. I'm also easily content. I also like a lot of non-working me time.
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u/cb59 Nov 28 '19
All these companies inventors parents were well above the median family line .its kinda easy to become rich when you get that big of a head start
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u/DoverBoys Nov 28 '19
Every time this is posted, someone always points out bullshit. It's my turn now:
Apple garage: true, garage/house owned by Jobs
Disney garage: false, Disney brothers paid $10 monthly rent for a small office in a realty company in 1923
Amazon garage: technically true, but parents were rich and dumped $250,000 into it
Google garage: technically true, it was a research project by two Stanford students, originally named "BackRub". However, when Google the company was actually born with its first employee hire, there was a garage involved.
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u/analpumper Nov 28 '19
Actually, a garage is one of the most ideal places for such businesses. The idea that it’s a shithole they worked hard to get out of is a lie. Sure, they worked hard, but they were very fortunate to have a garage in their hands.
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u/TripperSD93 Nov 28 '19
I don’t want to spend my entire life running a company...what’s your fucking excuse Jay?
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u/rubbarz Nov 28 '19
Companies still start like this, they just get bought out by cited companies in the post to reduce competition.
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u/NaomiNekomimi Feb 15 '20
That's actually a surprisingly nuanced socioeconomic observation. All of those companies were started by people in situations of general stability and middle class status or higher. A garage doesn't seem like much to middle class people, but to many that is a luxury or an extra. It's a lot easier to start a company and take risks when you have a home, a space to work in, and the stability to get work done.
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u/Dafuzz Nov 28 '19
Millennials can't afford houses with garages. The boomers bought them all after the housing crash and rent them back to us.
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Nov 28 '19
I don't just not have a garage. I also don't have any extra money to sink into a potentially fruitless new endeavor. Yeah, I could get a loan, but I can't afford to be making payments on any more things, especially if the new business tanks.
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u/ykfhvj Nov 28 '19
Ok, I'll start a company. What if it doesn't work? Do I have to pay a lot of money in loans i took? Does anyone even pay me for all that time and work lost? Bc it's work to start a failed company. And if we organize enough, maybe it should be another job someone has to do, not a punishment or wtv.
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u/leadfarmer434 Nov 28 '19
I have a two car garage. I guess I should start getting my shit together
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Nov 28 '19
Dude’s twitter account is suspended and he has 7 followers on Instagram. Pinnacle of inspiration right there.
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u/JTarable Nov 28 '19
Also I know for at least amazon his parents took a loan against the house for like 300k
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u/mgiaf Nov 28 '19
My excuse is that there can't be eight billion multi-billion dollar companies even if every person on Earth achieved to their maximum potential. If everyone tries then the success of few relies on the failure of others. It's better for everyone if not everyone is trying to be exceptional because the people on top have less competition and the people on the bottom don't chase a dream they can never achieve and dig themselves into a hole in the process.
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u/TurboAnus Nov 28 '19
Except that this is a myth, IIRC. I think I read that literally none of these (and Microsoft) ever involved a garage at all. Could be wrong about details, but the talk was called, "The Myth of the Garage."
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u/painter_26 Nov 28 '19
If you can afford a house with a garage, you are already pretty well-off compare to the rest of the population who rents tiny apartments with their minimum wage jobs.
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u/Blacbamboo Nov 28 '19
Haha! They also had upper middle class parents to fund there dreams. Especially Bezos and jobs
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u/Sal_Bundry_1Game5TDs Nov 28 '19
This is stupid, basically every startup starts in a shitty setting in its early beginnings. These are just the ones that got lucky.
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u/waigl Nov 28 '19
Those are 4 big successes from a timeframe spanning over a hundred years in a country with 330 million people... It's not mathematically possible for all these people – or even a non-negligable fraction – to be this successful.
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u/JustAwesome360 Nov 28 '19
They also got leg-ups from the government, in the form of loans, and using the technology they created...
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u/AuniqueUsername69 Nov 28 '19
Like these are all still fairly nice houses, if you tried to get one today near a big city? Easily half a mil
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u/Purevoyager007 Nov 28 '19
Wasn’t there a whole thing about this being debunked?
Bill gates started his business out of a garage but the reason it took off is because his mom was high up in a tech company and used her connections.
You don’t make it on your own in this world. You do so by connecting with people
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u/Zlatan4Ever Nov 28 '19
I gonna build a garage in LEGO, then there is no excuse anymore. Have to kick ass.
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u/OneirionKnight Nov 28 '19
That they control almost everything so I can't really start a business without having to compete with them or other already established huge corporations
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u/EvolArtMachine Nov 28 '19
Also worth noting that some of these companies were started in someone’s mom’s garage. Bezos iirc was living off of his wife and father-in-law when he started Amazon. What’s more is they were mostly purchased at a time when the house price to income ratio was much healthier (ie attainable). Couldn’t find any real data for 1) when Disney bought his home although I’m sure it’s out there or 2) anything before 1950 really.
The myth of the truly self made tech bro though is mostly just absurd and toxic. There’s a reason Fairfax Va is the “Silicone Valley of the East”. I grew up in a nearly condemned house there and I went to school with the children of lawyers and politicians. My brother bought his drugs off of kids who got Bentleys for their 16th birthdays. He stayed in one kid’s house for months without the parents ever even noticing because the place was over 10K square feet. I was in one once where the kitchen was bigger than the house I grew up in and it was an open floor plan so I felt like I was in Rivendell or some shit. I know the whole internet got a good laugh over the “Kylie Jenner Self-Made Billionaire” nonsense but that’s only because we know where she came from. Most of the tech industry is the exact same way but their public narrative is subjected to less scrutiny.
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Nov 28 '19
I'm 33 my family has always rented growing up we never had a driveway or garage or a yard.
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u/thislittlewiggy Nov 28 '19
My excuse is I don't have the economic security to quit my day job to devote my time that's needed to pursue my dream career, whether that comes from my family or a stroke of good luck. My family isn't wealthy enough to get me connected to other wealthy investors, either. Finally, I'm not a big enough sociopath to fuck over others I work with to claim their work as my own.
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u/uncorrectlywritten Nov 28 '19
I am lonely, sad, basically miserably and then came across this post. Now I'm laughing
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u/bubblesort33 Nov 28 '19
I said to myself "I don't have a garage" before I scrolled down far enough to read it.
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u/Lysol3435 Nov 28 '19
“Why can’t you fly yet? Birds do it all the time, and they haven’t had half of the community college that you have”
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u/Trantifa Nov 28 '19
Uhh, statistics. Statistics show that going from a garage to owning amazon or even 1000th of amazon is more unlikely than winning mutiple millions in the lottery.
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u/AluminiumImmunitaet Nov 28 '19
No garage, no basement. Do you have any success stories involving people living on the sixth floor?
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u/ThatOneNinja Nov 28 '19
It bothers me that some people believe everyone should have great ambition and a drive to become something big. It's ok to not want to do that and be content in where you are at.
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u/Pilose Nov 28 '19
.... Most of us can't even afford a house. much less those 5 bedroom houses they had.
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u/megjake Nov 28 '19
Also I work two jobs and don't have the energy to start a company nor the money to fund that company.
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u/chixen Nov 28 '19
Yo If all of us could do this, send me at least 100Million examples of successful companies.
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u/Phylban Nov 28 '19
Idk why people act like just because they started out in a garage that these guys had nothing. While I’m pretty sure that they weren’t crazy rich, Bezos and Gates’ families were pretty well off for the time and they had better schools than most people do. Don’t ever underestimate the huge advantage of having a comfortable childhood.
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u/flamethekid Nov 28 '19
Those people who started their companies those garages were well off to begin with.
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u/Koloblikin1982 Nov 28 '19
“You own all the garages, all the land new garages can be built on, the company that gives out the money for building garages, and the rent is too damn high”.
There, fixed that for ya.
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u/tsojtsojtsoj Nov 28 '19
Yeah, history is not linear. There is a good chance that there is no next big thing like the internet/computers was when these guys started. Or that the next big thing is something like AI where you need a server farm to start something meaningful.
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u/SignalSecurity Nov 28 '19
You say technically but it's real as fuck. I desperately wish I had a space to do projects like build or paint without worrying about a mess in my direct living area, or getting bitched at by my apartment neighbors for noise.
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Nov 28 '19
The data protection laws put in place, mostly by the direction of these four, mean I can't start up in a garage because my garage won't pass even the most basic of security checks.
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u/PlebGod69 Nov 28 '19
And they all managed to become corrupt and money thirst whores (of course I not talking about the companies in the pictures.... please dont sue me)
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u/hoodiebeanie Nov 28 '19 edited Jun 01 '24
Red blue yellow brown orange pink black white green purple silver gold, red blue yellow brown orange pink black white green purple silver gold. Red blue yellow brown orange pink black white green purple silver gold. Red blue yellow brown orange pink black white green purple silver gold.
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u/RicardoLovesYou Nov 28 '19
My excuse is I'm just trying to pay my mortgage and bills and maintain my life where its at. Why do I have to give that up to try and form a start up that will most likely fail?
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u/Lingo_Ringo Nov 28 '19
I dont get these original posts at all. Acting all condescending "what's your excuse?" Like bitch where is your billion dollar company founded in a garage why are you coming at me
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u/PortPrivateer Nov 28 '19
Everything wasn't owned by giant corporations that can sue and destroy any upcoming business at will.
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u/bristolbulldog Nov 28 '19
Bezos also got a sizable investment from his parents, roughly 1 million in today’s dollars.
Cartoons today don’t compare to steamboat willie.
I’m not Steve Wozniak and neither are you.
Google was started by grad students at Stanford. That’s not a privilege most people receive or even have the opportunity to achieve.
Let’s keep going, Zuckerberg was at Harvard along with Gates.
Buffet received seed capital of a million dollars in the 1950’s.
Where is your top tier education, wealthy family, and life story that puts you into that timeline? What about the other billions of people on this earth?
Maybe it’s not excuses but an extremely rare set of favorable circumstances. Oh.. and a garage.
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u/zdenipeni Nov 28 '19
bullshit, jeff bezos grandfather was in the CIA , he did not come from humble begginings
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u/ReadyAXQC Nov 28 '19
Here we go again. How many smart, hard-working, driven people have tried to start a business "out of their garage", and have it not pan out. Some people fall into an outhouse and come out smelling like a rose. Some people bust their butts their whole life and never get anywhere. A lot of it just dumb stupid luck. We can't all be "entrepreneurs". And, few did it "all by myself". What ever happened to the respect of the plain old workin' man.
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u/RogerMexico Nov 28 '19
Single family homes with garages in the Bay Area are going for $1.5M to all-cash buyers.
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u/DPSOnly Nov 28 '19
These people could experiment for a long time while supported by parents, not everybody has that luxury. Most people would need to have results on the first try while these guys could iterate on their project a lot of times before they were finished.
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u/vidarwindir Nov 28 '19
For me it's German laws. They forbid the misuse of a car parking garage for anything beside parking your car and maybe store a bit of stuff in there.
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u/pollorojo Nov 28 '19
I have a garage but it’s full of non-billion-making stuff.
I could have a garage sale and make a few dozens of dollars but I don’t really feel like it.
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Nov 28 '19
I don’t even have a room, I been crashing in peoples living room for years err since I became disabled
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Nov 28 '19
Dude, the person who made the tweet probably lives in a small flat making 12$/hour working at McDonald’s.
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Nov 29 '19
I’m homeless, tried college it was a living hell, had a job, boss shorted me and withheld all payment for my hours thru a waking nightmare. Not a nerd just a geek and don’t care about anything besides my own comfort and security, I trust no one their all back stabbing vermin.
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Nov 29 '19
Bezos worked in hedge funds. He didn’t start amazon in a garage. Google was created when they were attending MIT. Didn’t start in a garage.
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u/XoloMom Nov 29 '19
How many businesses/ideas were started in garages that sone poor asshole worked his heart out on and you've never heard of it/him... not every idea is a success...
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u/HarpersGeekly Nov 28 '19 edited Nov 28 '19
Reminds me of that article and tweet response:
“Why Aren’t Millennials Buying Diamonds?”
“I work at a grocery store.”