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I do believe this focus on billions of $ is extremely weird. You can live a very very nice life on a few million $. And that in itself is a weird and skewed sta

I do believe this focus on billions of $ is extremely weird. You can live a very very nice life on a few million $. And that in itself is a weird and skewed statement of what people consider nice. There are 1000s of places all over the world with fantastic living conditions in climate, health, healthcare, pensions etc you can grow old with a few 100k. The unicorn or bust idea is very strange as the chances you will make that are very close to 0; putting everything in it instead of building a solid business and 'we will see what happens' is rather alien to me. Having a long term profitable company is far far easier than a multi million or billion payout. People who need fast cars and million$ mansions should know what risk they are taking and explain that to their family when taking them.

mgkimsal 10y ago
FWIW, many of the folks I know that are shooting for the 'big payout' aren't really chasing after the fast cars and material side of things - it's simply what the definition of 'success' has been in the tech world for a long time. TechCrunch (and that ilk) is a sort of porn, and I've known some folks become addicted to that narrative. Some of the stories on HN probably feed in to that as well. If/when you're down, seeing so much seemingly easy success (and, let's be fair, some of it really was easy - there are people we read about who didn't slave away for 10 years to become an 'overnight sensation') is difficult to deal with. I don't think Dennis in particular was necessarily after the fast cars and million $ mansion (actually, he had a million dollar house already, on mortgage).