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If you have the skills to go work for Google and climb up the career ladder there, you probably have the skills to start your own company, work harder and retir

If you have the skills to go work for Google and climb up the career ladder there, you probably have the skills to start your own company, work harder and retire at 40 (not 60) with a decent amount of wealth. Just find an interesting niche, develop it for a large market and don't waste your time on worthless features. I retired at 41 this way and don't think I was even Google material when I started (too old and relatively inexperienced). Also, listen to this advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10787615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10787615

pjc50 11y ago
Just find an interesting niche, develop it for a large market and don't waste your time on worthless features. "Just" It requires a good mixture of luck and keeping your ear to the ground to find an undeveloped but large market niche, and a good crystal ball to know which features are worthwhile. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's far from a certain path to victory.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  The more domain expertise you have, the less luck you need to identify a worthwhile niche in that domain. People tend to think that startups are for young people, but most successful startups are actually founded by 40-something year-olds for this very reason. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-age-of-founders-for-the-most-successful-startups https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-age-of-founders-fo...
- lazyjones 11y ago
  > It requires a good mixture of luck and keeping your ear to the ground to find an undeveloped but large market niche, and a good crystal ball to know which features are worthwhile. That's a bit exaggerated IMO. Granted, it's harder now than 15 years ago to find something under(not un-)developed on the Web e.g. that seems doable and interesting, but if you keep an open eye, you see opportunities every day and wonder why something that seems useful hasn't been done (or done properly). Some of these potential products will be very hard to develop fully and never be perfect, which doesn't make them less interesting (the opposite is true perhaps - does Google Search work perfectly?), only a bit scarier. As for which features are worthwhile: a lot of wisdom has been written down about this - it's important to look at the product from the perspective of a user. If you lose that perspective, talk to real users. The rest is hard work and that's easier and more rewarding if you work for yourself, I believe. My advice is that if you find yourself thinking "XYZ would be nice to have, why hasn't someone done this?" or "all solutions for XYZ I can find are terrible, why hasn't anyone done it right?", just sit down and attempt to do it, if it fits your skill set somehow (doesn't have to be a perfect fit and you don't need an MBA!). People are getting rich like this all the time. Don't look for "unicorn" ideas, you don't need to chase billions to retire comfortably.
AznHisoka 11y ago
The skills to excel in Google are different than the skills to excel building a startup. For starters, it's not about solving a problem creatively but choosing the right problem to solve.
- lazyjones 11y ago
  > For starters, it's not about solving a problem creatively but choosing the right problem to solve. That's just a tiny and in the long run, insignificant part of building a startup. Bad choices fail quickly, you can choose something else.
  - argonaut 11y ago
    Don't be so dismissive. That's a huge part of the problem. Your average engineer at Google (or anywhere, really) does not have a good sense of product design / product creation.
argonaut 11y ago
If you work hard at Google, you can easily retire at 40.
- seattle_spring 11y ago
  I completely agree with this. I can't imagine the inflated lifestyle people are living, saying they can't retire until they make $300k+ for 40 years.
edc117 11y ago
Out of curiosity, how old were you when you started? I didn't really begin my career until 28 or so (35 now, undergrad and grad CS degree at a pretty good university) and I've been toying with the idea of moving to something else. Still trying to find an interesting niche that really speaks to me, though I keep my skills current. I do fairly well for compensation but the way the market has been, I feel like I'm short-changing myself by not taking a shot at a career with the really big players, and I'd love to retire within the next 5-10 years as well. (obviously I've started saving already)
- lazyjones 11y ago
  > how old were you when you started? The project started as a hobby/side project when I was 24-25, it got funded and incorporated when I was 27.

pjc50 11y ago

Just find an interesting niche, develop it for a large market and don't waste your time on worthless features. "Just" It requires a good mixture of luck and keeping your ear to the ground to find an undeveloped but large market niche, and a good crystal ball to know which features are worthwhile. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's far from a certain path to victory.

enraged_camel 11y ago
The more domain expertise you have, the less luck you need to identify a worthwhile niche in that domain. People tend to think that startups are for young people, but most successful startups are actually founded by 40-something year-olds for this very reason. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-age-of-founders-for-the-most-successful-startups https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-age-of-founders-fo...
lazyjones 11y ago
> It requires a good mixture of luck and keeping your ear to the ground to find an undeveloped but large market niche, and a good crystal ball to know which features are worthwhile. That's a bit exaggerated IMO. Granted, it's harder now than 15 years ago to find something under(not un-)developed on the Web e.g. that seems doable and interesting, but if you keep an open eye, you see opportunities every day and wonder why something that seems useful hasn't been done (or done properly). Some of these potential products will be very hard to develop fully and never be perfect, which doesn't make them less interesting (the opposite is true perhaps - does Google Search work perfectly?), only a bit scarier. As for which features are worthwhile: a lot of wisdom has been written down about this - it's important to look at the product from the perspective of a user. If you lose that perspective, talk to real users. The rest is hard work and that's easier and more rewarding if you work for yourself, I believe. My advice is that if you find yourself thinking "XYZ would be nice to have, why hasn't someone done this?" or "all solutions for XYZ I can find are terrible, why hasn't anyone done it right?", just sit down and attempt to do it, if it fits your skill set somehow (doesn't have to be a perfect fit and you don't need an MBA!). People are getting rich like this all the time. Don't look for "unicorn" ideas, you don't need to chase billions to retire comfortably.

AznHisoka 11y ago

The skills to excel in Google are different than the skills to excel building a startup. For starters, it's not about solving a problem creatively but choosing the right problem to solve.

lazyjones 11y ago
> For starters, it's not about solving a problem creatively but choosing the right problem to solve. That's just a tiny and in the long run, insignificant part of building a startup. Bad choices fail quickly, you can choose something else.
- argonaut 11y ago
  Don't be so dismissive. That's a huge part of the problem. Your average engineer at Google (or anywhere, really) does not have a good sense of product design / product creation.

argonaut 11y ago

If you work hard at Google, you can easily retire at 40.

seattle_spring 11y ago
I completely agree with this. I can't imagine the inflated lifestyle people are living, saying they can't retire until they make $300k+ for 40 years.

edc117 11y ago

Out of curiosity, how old were you when you started? I didn't really begin my career until 28 or so (35 now, undergrad and grad CS degree at a pretty good university) and I've been toying with the idea of moving to something else. Still trying to find an interesting niche that really speaks to me, though I keep my skills current. I do fairly well for compensation but the way the market has been, I feel like I'm short-changing myself by not taking a shot at a career with the really big players, and I'd love to retire within the next 5-10 years as well. (obviously I've started saving already)

lazyjones 11y ago
> how old were you when you started? The project started as a hobby/side project when I was 24-25, it got funded and incorporated when I was 27.