Tyshawn started making money and decides to open a restaurant in his home neighborhood with his mother, which closed in due to COVID. Sounds like he reinvested in his community and family and was met with unforeseen circumstances. Making him seem like a fool for it is a little fucked.
If Sucui started a natural wine bar in Cupertino when he got his Adidas shoe check and it shuttered due to COVID, it wouldn’t be discussed the same way.
If you’re referring to me saying “a fool and his money…” it’s a saying, and everyone’s been that type of fool at some point. Hopefully he learns something from the experience.
It’s a pretty common thing for a gifted athlete to be overconfident in other ventures, outside of where their physical gifts stop being an asset (Jereme Rogers and rapping anyone?) In many cases, they’ve worked at one thing, very hard and with laser focus and assume that they must have just worked harder and with more specific dedication than others, overlooking the physical advantages they had in becoming exceptional. Unfortunately, that same singleminded focus also means they sometimes skipped some of the experiences people have had that will be competing with them in these other fields (say going to college for business or accounting, or spending everyday in a family restaurant instead of practicing athletics.)
As I said before, I feel bad for him. Not as bad as I feel for the restaurants that have no second career to fall back on though. He’s young and gets interviewed about being an entrepreneur consistently, it becomes a self fulfilling narrative that he’s going to buy into, but that’s not going to stop the real world from demanding he knows what he’s doing if he wants to compete off the board.
Sucui didn’t open a wine bar, and despite the margins being better, there being less spoilage, and easier quality control, he very well might have been criticized for being out of his depth.