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Inject some misery into kids' lives
Kids handed that level of life miss the drive that Mike Tyson and many self-made people carried, and Doug Leone considers that a cost. A parent can't give them everything, because otherwise they won't be hungry, so some misery has to go into their lives. It can be fake, since the kids know it is.
Drive comes from many places, and plenty of kids who grew up wealthy have it. One Sequoia partner grew up with means and gets his from competing with his twin brother. They attended the same college, played wide receiver on opposite sides of the field, adore each other, and love nothing more than beating each other up.
Another source is smaller. A son-in-law who is driven like crazy cannot stand cheese, because his older brother loves eating it.
How does sibling rivalry fuel ambition?
Psychologist Alfred Adler proposed in the early 1900s that siblings compete for position in the family, and that the competition shapes personality. In his 1996 book Born to Rebel, Frank Sulloway argued that siblings tend to carve out different niches to stand apart from each other. Twins stand out among siblings, since they share an age and often the same activities, which makes comparison constant.
What drove Mike Tyson's fierce ambition?
Tyson grew up in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn and had been arrested many times by his early teens. The trainer Cus D'Amato took him in and became his legal guardian after his mother died in 1982. In 1986, at twenty, Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history.
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