1 in 100 is actually an interesting case study. If you read Outliers by Malcom Gladwell you’d know that Bill Gates was “lucky” enough to go to a school where he had access to a very early version of a computer. It’s true his school was exclusive, and access to the computer was some what limited, but the point is at least 100 kids at that time had the opportunity.
Bill Gates was fascinated by the machine and was willing to devote time to playing with it. While other kids were making out behind the bleachers, he and three friends found ways to hack the machine to give them more time. The other three where Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans, two of whom were the initial founders of Microsoft.
At the same time, on the other side of the country, only a handful of universities had access to early computers. 1 in 100 students were willing to spend their free time “playing” with the code. Keep in mind these computers cost a fortune, so students with access were “lucky” but it wasn’t a case where rich kids with rich parents had a computer bought for them. These computers were also being used during the day for real work, so to get access meant using them overnight when no one else was. This was the case for the developers Oracle and Sun Microsystems if I remember correctly.
These aren’t people that came from huge sums of money, they were the ones willing to devote huge amounts of time with very little pay.
The so called “team of developers” came decades after Microsoft started.
And the point to all this is that there were 100 kids that had the opportunity to be Bill Gates, only three others could be bothered.
Steve Jobs was a broke Buddhist living on his friend’s floor for most of his early career.
Warren Buffett came from a good family, but the guy started his business career as a child selling news papers. He pulled together capital for a pinball machine. He wasn’t just handed a huge some of money to make himself rich.
This difference in the US from a lot of other countries with similar distribution of wealth is that America provides the opportunities few others can. You don’t need to be part of the royal family, you don’t need to be born into the Brahman class.
Canada is way up on the list, and having grown up there I can tell you the opportunities for wealth just aren’t there. It is, however, very easy to grow up and become middle class. My wife and I are the 1 in 100 that grew up and left to make more money. The other 98 got nursing/education degrees and live a nice simple middle class existence. If you want a be a billionaire Canada isn’t the place to do it.
Look again at the list of the top 400 and notice how many of them were guys that made millions in their home country, then moved to the US to make billions.
Where I grew up also produces really good hockey players. Lots and lots of them thanks to subsidized programs and good genetics. But the nature of the programs only produces “good” players. If you want to be great, if you want to make the NHL, you need to leave. The opportunities aren’t there. We don’t have semi or professional teams, we don’t have hockey scholarships. So 100 kids can be reasonably good hockey players. There is no chance for the 1 to become great unless he leaves.
(No, really, good one, I liked that.)