Reading biographies of successful entrepreneurs and businessmen, small loans from parents show up in the biographies quite often.

These are from 5k to 100k USD. A number that objectively isn't that much for the millions of parents in America's upper middle class.

1/n

That the entrepreneurs are getting these initial funds from their parents doesn't necessarily mean investors are bad at spotting talent.

It might just mean parents are willing to make negative expected value bets on their children. For a minority these bets work out.

2/n

It also doesn't mean nepotism alone is the way up, the vast majority of such investments and loans fail. Your untalented children aren't saved by 10-100k. It probably takes 5-20M to buy them 'success'.

3/n

These upper middle class parents are at their loss subsidizing economic growth in ways that professional investors would never do.

We should encourage them to do so! We should consider such investment at least as pro-social as saving for college.

4/n

As a reminder the lower threshold for a household to reach the top 10.00% annual gross income in United States is $118,200.

There are about 123.6 million U.S. households in the U.S., which means 12.3 million households could chose to prioritize such investments!

5/n

Even on the selfish perspective and even if you're not upper middle class you should consider saving not just 'for college' but for investments into your children's ventures.

6/n

The returns on typical college degrees (outside Ivy League + MIT + Stanford ) are worse every year.

There is further a strong arguments you're contributing to a negative sum race for privilege rather than genuine investment into human capital when you send kids to college.

7/n