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I'm surprised that the ultra conservative advice got voted up on a start up geared website. I would have thought I'd see more risk taking from the users

loup-vaillant 16y ago
Except the typical startup founder, he now have something to lose.
reitzensteinm 16y ago
In the case of being a startup founder, you're risking little to potentially gain a lot. In the case of investing your newly earned fortune, you're risking a lot to gain a little (as a percentage). The fact that the HN readership seems to be aggressive in the former case and conservative in the latter is not necessarily a contradiction (or, to be honest, even surprising).
- adamilardi 16y ago
  The risk involved to start a business is time and money. You take one year off as a high paid engineer your losing over 100K. What if you need to boot strap your business because venture funds aren't available. The risk is low if you coded something on your spare time and somehow got a huge amount of VC funds(CD style investing). Wise investments are key to success of any business. How will you allocate your first millions in VC funds. Are you going to invest in staff, equipment or acquisitions. Sure you will have advisers at this point but it's important to understand the value of investments. If you are not surprised I would imagine you view the majority of start ups as the former kind I mentioned. Spare time and lots of vc money. I don't have any evidence to say that isn't always the case but it would appear odd to me if it was.
nihilocrat 16y ago
It's also a site frequented by people working salaried jobs and moderately successful freelancers who will never, ever see more than perhaps $100,000 in their bank accounts at any one moment for their entire lives. Thus, we may be thinking of it in terms of "how can I use this money to invest such that I can live off of the interest for the rest of my life, getting the equivalent of a decent salary but without the actual work"? If I got millions of dollars, this would be the first thing I would be thinking about, not about how to risk it all just so I can be another greedy douchebag unhappy with their single-digit millions.
petercooper 16y ago
I wouldn't consider putting 95% of your wealth in a single place to be particularly non-risky. Certified or not, recent events have demonstrated that diversification is a must nowadays.
- brk 16y ago
  Yes, you are 100% correct. What I was trying to say is that overall he is better parking the cash and learning more about how to properly invest a large sum of money vs. just going out to the closest Edward Jones office and plunking down a check.
anamax 16y ago
> I'm surprised that the ultra conservative advice got voted up on a start up geared website. I would have thought I'd see more risk taking from the users The "conservative advice" is intended to buy him time so he can figure out what he should do. Note that startups aren't about seeking risk. They're about exploiting cases where the perceived risk is greater than the actual risk. The advice givers think that his perceived risk is currently lower than his actual risk. They're trying to reduce the latter.

loup-vaillant 16y ago

Except the typical startup founder, he now have something to lose.

reitzensteinm 16y ago

In the case of being a startup founder, you're risking little to potentially gain a lot. In the case of investing your newly earned fortune, you're risking a lot to gain a little (as a percentage). The fact that the HN readership seems to be aggressive in the former case and conservative in the latter is not necessarily a contradiction (or, to be honest, even surprising).

adamilardi 16y ago
The risk involved to start a business is time and money. You take one year off as a high paid engineer your losing over 100K. What if you need to boot strap your business because venture funds aren't available. The risk is low if you coded something on your spare time and somehow got a huge amount of VC funds(CD style investing). Wise investments are key to success of any business. How will you allocate your first millions in VC funds. Are you going to invest in staff, equipment or acquisitions. Sure you will have advisers at this point but it's important to understand the value of investments. If you are not surprised I would imagine you view the majority of start ups as the former kind I mentioned. Spare time and lots of vc money. I don't have any evidence to say that isn't always the case but it would appear odd to me if it was.

nihilocrat 16y ago

It's also a site frequented by people working salaried jobs and moderately successful freelancers who will never, ever see more than perhaps $100,000 in their bank accounts at any one moment for their entire lives. Thus, we may be thinking of it in terms of "how can I use this money to invest such that I can live off of the interest for the rest of my life, getting the equivalent of a decent salary but without the actual work"? If I got millions of dollars, this would be the first thing I would be thinking about, not about how to risk it all just so I can be another greedy douchebag unhappy with their single-digit millions.

petercooper 16y ago

I wouldn't consider putting 95% of your wealth in a single place to be particularly non-risky. Certified or not, recent events have demonstrated that diversification is a must nowadays.

brk 16y ago
Yes, you are 100% correct. What I was trying to say is that overall he is better parking the cash and learning more about how to properly invest a large sum of money vs. just going out to the closest Edward Jones office and plunking down a check.

anamax 16y ago

> I'm surprised that the ultra conservative advice got voted up on a start up geared website. I would have thought I'd see more risk taking from the users The "conservative advice" is intended to buy him time so he can figure out what he should do. Note that startups aren't about seeking risk. They're about exploiting cases where the perceived risk is greater than the actual risk. The advice givers think that his perceived risk is currently lower than his actual risk. They're trying to reduce the latter.