Evan Spiegel, Co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. (originally called Snapchat Inc.) with a net worth of $4.3 billion currently 27 years old;
Bobby Murphy, Co-founder and CTO of Snap Inc. with a net worth of $3.2 billion currently 29 years old
and of course, the youngest billionaires in the world, the Norwegian heiresses Alexandra and Katharina Andresen, who are 21 and 22 years old, respectively. With large inheritances of $1.4 billion each.
Occasionally, we wish to be like the Norwegian heiresses, get born into fortune and have large inheritances to pull out of it so you don't have to work a day in your life 😁. However, seeing as we can't change the families we are born into and all the wishes we've had about one day finding out that our 'real parents' are very rich or that our parents were hiding their fortune all along, we have to opt in for number 2 option. Starting a business that might one day grow to make you billions. I dare say, this is the reason why 'entrepreneurship' is the most attractive vocation to go into in this generation.
The youth is faced with this burden to excel early in life. He is burdened with the pressure of peer success. He is tempted to do the things he doesn't want to do or things he wasn't endowed to do to achieve what others have. The youth is cursed, cursed with the crisis of urgency. The urge to succeed early, like it has been done before.
When the youth do excel, a second burden comes, the burden of building a lasting legacy. The burden of remaining at the top. For some youth, somewhere along the line, they get dragged down by issues that may go a long way to test the validity of the success stories they have. The likes of
Elizabeth Holmes the CEO of Theranos
and the most recent one, Mark Zuckerberg.
While I don't think the crisis of urgency is a death trap on its own, I think there are a few realities the youth might need to face before they get confronted by them later on.
The pressures we face as young people cannot be taken with tender spines, shaken will and flinching courage. In the pursuit of early success we would be confronted with the fiercest of battles that will test the validity of our strength. We need to face the reality that our success is and would be a threat to someone's previous success and no one would let their success go down the drain without a fight. Hence, the battles we'd face.
We need to focus on the seemingly unimportant details because the world we live in would not forgive us for our mistakes no matter how little and our age would not be taken as an excuse. Our age would most likely be blamed for our shortcomings.
Friends, we need to be ready to brave these storms not just for our sake alone but for future generations who would choose to walk the same path. We must fight and we must win every time ✊.
Greatness will find you speedily. I'm sure of it.
Comments
Really nice write up Edna.