I have a controversial take: there is no such thing as self-made success.

But before you disagree with me

What exactly do you mean by “self-made”?

Is it someone who didn't receive money from their parents?

Someone who didn't have a mentor?

Someone who paid for everything themselves?

Or someone who learned everything without being formally taught?

Because depending on your definition, the idea starts falling apart pretty quickly.

Take a software developer who says, “I'm completely self-taught.”

Maybe they didn't go to university for Computer Science.

Maybe they never paid for a programming course.

Maybe they learned everything from YouTube.

Fair enough.

But then ask: who taught them through those YouTube videos?

Someone.

And who taught that person?

Someone else.

The developer didn't create the programming language they're using. They didn't build the computer they're coding on. They didn't create the internet that delivered those tutorials to them. They didn't write the documentation, build the libraries, or create the thousands of open-source projects they can use for free.

Yet we call them “self-made.”

This is where the idea gets interesting.

We have somehow started treating “free” as “without help.”

But free doesn't mean nobody paid.

If you watch a three-hour YouTube tutorial for free, the person who made it still paid for it—with their time, experience, failed attempts, research and years of learning.

You simply didn't pay the price they paid.

And this applies far beyond developers.

The entrepreneur who learned business from books didn't invent the knowledge in those books.

The writer who says they found their voice alone was influenced by writers they read.

The person who built a successful business from scratch still depends on customers, employees, suppliers, roads, banks, electricity, the internet, laws and countless systems they didn't create.

Even the person who truly received no financial support still inherited something from society: language, knowledge, technology, infrastructure, ideas and opportunities created before they arrived.

None of this means their hard work doesn't count.

It does.

But there's a difference between being responsible for your success and being the sole cause of it.

You can honestly say, “I worked for everything I have.”

But “I did it all by myself” is a much harder claim to defend.

Because once you start tracing the chain backwards, you eventually reach a point where somebody else contributed something.

A teacher.

A creator.

A stranger.

A customer.

A parent.

A researcher.

A programmer.

A writer.

Or simply someone who lived before you and left behind knowledge you were able to use.

So perhaps the better question isn't:

“Who made you successful?”

It's:

“How much of your success actually began with you?”

And that's where the idea of being completely “self-made” becomes difficult to sustain.

This is my take. How would you define self made