Aidan Smith indicated that Bezos’ parents financed him with more than $245k

Aidan also explained how other famous tycoons had a lot of help because they had wealthy families.

And about Warren Buffett:

Even Mark Zuckerberg might not be a billionaire without expensive school.

The Waltons and the Kochs

Kylie Jenner

The point of the story is that people shouldn’t feel too bad for being broke because many very wealthy people had financial backing.

Aidan told the reporters that he has a decent number of followers and is used to his posts getting moderate attention. “But I’m pleasantly surprised by how much of an impact this tweet in particular had.”

He says that thinking that some prominent billionaires are self-made when they might not be is toxic. “For one, even in the rare cases in which people from working-class backgrounds amass exorbitant wealth, it’s still not ‘self-made’ given that amassing wealth on that scale will always have come from ruthless exploitation of others.”

People focus on the fact that Bezos started Amazon in his parents’ garage. Still, the fact that his parents invested 245,573 dollars in Amazon in 1995 just slipped unnoticed.

Bloomberg noticed that if Bezos’ mom and dad kept all of their shares in the company, they would have been worth about $30 billion in 2018. It is unclear how much stock Jackie and Mike Bezos still own. 

Bezos and others are successful, dedicated people who are not afraid to take risks (and deserve every credit for their effort), but they're not completely self-made.

Aidan's post got more than 489k likes, nearly 150k retweets, and opened a debate. Some of the internet users were amazed to learn some of the stuff that Aidan posted.

Others agreed with him. But let's not forget – if you are born poor, it doesn't mean you have to stop trying.

People couldn’t agree over Aidan’s posts. Some believed that success is a success no matter what, and others concurred with Aidan’s points.