Roughly 50 percent of self-employed proprietors are second-generation proprietors. These individuals acquire informal business experience while growing up in the context of a family business. Since some of this informal experience substitutes for more formally acquired schooling, measured rates of return to the latter will not be as high as for wage/salary workers. Early acquisition of managerial human capital that can be acquired only through experience implies differentially greater proprietary success for second-generation proprietors compared with first-generation proprietors. The authors present evidence in favor of both hypotheses.