Of the billionaires on the 2023 Forbes 400 list — the 400 richest people in the United States — 70% are basically self-made. In 1982, only 40% of the Forbes 400 had started their own business; the majority were simply scions of inherited wealth. The Forbes 400, however, is the extreme right tail of the curve. But you're not sniffing the Forbes 400 list, where the bidding starts at about $3 billion. I don't think VCs are deliberately picking founders they think are unreliable, although sometimes it seems like it.

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Persons: Raj Chetty, That's, Chamath Palihapitiya, Palihapitiya, Josh Wolfe, Wolfe, Elon Musk, Thiel, Jeff Bezos, we're, Sam Bankman, Andreessen Horowitz, A16z, Adam Neumann, Neumann, WeWork, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Horowitz, they've, Benchmark's Gurley, Gurley, Nate Silver Organizations: Forbes, United States —, Social Capital, Burger, Lux, VCs, New York Times, Penguin Press, Penguin Publishing, Penguin Random Locations: United States, America, Sri Lanka, Canada, Coney, Israeli, Silicon, Canyon Point , Utah