7 ms·

And a lot of people who are as smart and motivated will start their own company but will not get rich because they are not as lucky. Luck play a big part in suc

And a lot of people who are as smart and motivated will start their own company but will not get rich because they are not as lucky. Luck play a big part in success

dmitriid 5y ago
The more money you have the luckier you are.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. Starting with distant relatives that got into trouble and suddenly found a familial love for them, continuing with various false friends, gold diggers of both sexes and people hustling investment opportunities. Ending with lawyers and doctors who might induce you to undergo procedures that are more expensive, but not necessarily in the best interest for you. The price for being rich is being on constant alert and distrust against "luck" that isn't really luck, but a veiled threat. Edit: OK, I get it, not everywhere is Eastern Europe. Countries with old money have systems in place that mitigate this problem. (Although I am not so sure about mafia-heavy countries like Italy.)
  - mordae 5y ago
    Yes. Having extra cash means you can eat out (saves 1+ hour a day), buy an automated vacuum, dishwasher (extra 30 minutes a day), get a car or use taxi (1-2 hours, depending on location), hire a personal assistant (better organization, hard to estimate), get better medical care (less pain = better concentration)... You also have access to specialists. You can hire a lawyer, people to help you with research, people to help you present yourself on social media. In the end, you can extend your day and improve your productivity significantly, resulting in more hours available "to get lucky" effectively. I mean, being lucky when washing dishes does not help a lot, but being lucky when shopping for business opportunities...
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Oh yes, but depending on where you live, these effects kick in way under the "being rich" threshold. (America with its strange and expensive healthcare being an outlier in the developed world, I understand that.) What I was speaking about was the simplistic "more of X, more of Y" approach of the OP, though I understand that it was mostly sarcastic in nature. I would even argue that there is a sweet spot where you have enough money to live comfortably, but not enough to be a promising scam/crime target.
    - eloisant 5y ago
      Additionally being rich gives you a network of friends who are also rich, resulting in even more opportunities. Your friend who owns a house in Chamonix and will let you use it for free during your vacations, your friends CEO of a big company who will give a high level internship to your son, your friends starting a new company and asking you early if you want to invest in it, etc...
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      Being rich is like getting extra at-bats in a baseball game. If you're normal or poor, you typically get one strike and you're out. You saved your capital, invested it, and if you fail, you're gone. When you're rich, you get to swing several times at the ball. When you miss, you fall back to your wealth/family to support you while you save up for your next swing. Then, when you finally hit, as you're running the bases you can boast to everyone about how self-made your success is. When you're filthy rich, you have infinite at-bats, and basically it doesn't matter how good a baseball player you are, you're going to win.
  - Uberphallus 5y ago
    > Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. I'd say that's largely a new-rich problem. People born in rich families generally have the wealth management groomed in. I'm far from being rich, but that's something I'll teach my kids, as I believe one major driving factor in poor families staying poor is lack of education in economy and finance.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Now that is a good reply. Where I live (Czechia), pretty much everyone rich is new-rich, the tradition of old money was interrupted in 1948. That is a possible explanation for why I see this pattern fairly frequently, while other commenters seem to disagree.
      - Uberphallus 5y ago
        I can see that happening. In my country rich families don't fall for such things, except for the odd black sheep. Here you see that happening the most with lottery winners, particularly because people playing lotto are generally poor, and most among them financially illiterate. Top special price of the state lottery is around 500k€, and some stats showed that 90% of the winners lost 50% of that wealth within 2 years, while just putting it in some fund and sitting on that money would easily double their income while keeping their wealth. On that line, certain wealthy people tend to win the lotto a lot! It's a sign of fraud: they buy the tickets from the winners for a bigger amount than the prize, so they can insta-launder large sums of money. Then the actual winner sits on a slightly larger amount of money that can't be used for anything other than spending it, which financially is a terrible deal. But they all seem happy to do it, because they don't know any better.
      - goodpoint 5y ago
        I've seen the stereotypical difference between new and old-rich many times: the first ones tend to show off and overstate their wealth, the latter do the very opposite.
    - mempko 5y ago
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    To add to what the sibling comment already said: - If you don't have to work two jobs to survive, you have the time to pursue other things, and you're more "lucky". - If you have the ability to not work and can spend a year/two/five working out of a "garage", you're more "lucky" than those who can't. - If you have the ability to send your kids to an expensive college without you or them going into life-long debt, then those kids can create lasting connections (a.k.a. networking) and be significantly more "lucky" than those who can't. - If you have the money for good food, leisure, home, travel, medicine, etc., you're significantly more "lucky" than those who have to balance those things, and may not even have access to those things with all the consequences: chronic illnesses, stress etc.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      This is quite a huge spectrum of "rich" and "lucky". From absolutely basic things to expensive college. I cannot afford a vacation in Macchu Picchu, but it does not detract from my feeling of being lucky/unlucky. Local vacations in Europe or even in my own country are fine. If anything, Covid era was a good teacher in what really matters. And the college and networking is begging the question (IDK if I use the expression correctly). I do not doubt that Harvard graduates have it easier in general, but they are probably less prepared for a possible black swan event after which their degree won't have the weight it currently has. Shelling out enormous money for getting connections is a conformist (expensive and lazy) way of building career. I do not find much luck in that.
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        > does not detract from my feeling of being lucky/unlucky The question isn't about feeling lucky/unlucky. It doesn't matter if you can't take a vacation in Macchu Picchu. - Can you take a vacation any time you want? - Can you take a vacation for as long as you can? - Can you afford to take a full year (or more) to work on a passion project? Or on any project? On a startup idea? See, the more money you have, the more readily your answer will be yes to all the questions above. > Shelling out enormous money for getting connections is a conformist (expensive and lazy) way of building career. I do not find much luck in that. You can spend enormous money and have all the connections you need in four years. Or you can work your entire life and still never get those connections. > but they are probably less prepared for a possible black swan event Something tells me that Harvard graduates "survive" any and all black swan events significantly better than many others.
  - taurath 5y ago
    Extremely rich people around rookie who aren’t rich are likely targets, because frankly on a whim that extremely rich person can solve most of the poor persons material problems in an instant. That’s why rich people live in secluded communities so they don’t have to deal with the consequences of obscene wealth.
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
      The consequences of segregating society like this compound over time. This is why we're seeing a growing number of people unironically calling for the return of the guillotine. Kick a dog enough and it'll bite, or whatever.
      - taurath 5y ago
        When wealth disparity is already above that of 18th century France, one would probably be right to worry about the inevitable backlash, unless they can somehow keep people voting against their own economic interests for another few decades.
  - krageon 5y ago
    > a constant target of other people When you're poor, you're also a constant target of other people. When you're rich, perhaps that single aspect is the same but everything else in your life is so much better that it's kind of disingenuous to ignore it.
qazpot 5y ago
In startups you have to be right only once.
- mikro2nd 5y ago
  In startups you get to be wrong only once.
  - labatyd 5y ago
    What is that supposed to mean? Fail fast and move on is one of the mantras of the industry and as far as I can tell from reading HN most startup founders and employees all have numerous startups under their belt unless they accidently unicorned their very first one.
    - mikro2nd 5y ago
      It means, as you succinctly captured, that the startup is dead. The founders may well move on, but the original venture is toast. Point being: generally a startup doesn't have sufficient resource to recover from any serious missteps, particularly in the earlier parts of the game. All you can do is close the doors and move on to the next thing. Or get a job. The people survive (though frequently not without taking some damage, emotional, personal, financial or other) but the venture itself... no. source: Me. ~Veteran~ Survivor of 3 failed startups ;)
  - dopidopHN 5y ago
    Dépends who you are and even more who you parents are. Or what type of jobs you were doing before. As opposed to a successful exit. No matter the above, it’s still a successful exit.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  ...and be in the right country. And have money or a support network that helps you while chasing the unicorn. Or if you get sick.
- iso1631 5y ago

And a lot of people who are as smart and motivated will start their own company but will not get rich because they are not as lucky. Luck play a big part in success

dmitriid 5y ago

The more money you have the luckier you are.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. Starting with distant relatives that got into trouble and suddenly found a familial love for them, continuing with various false friends, gold diggers of both sexes and people hustling investment opportunities. Ending with lawyers and doctors who might induce you to undergo procedures that are more expensive, but not necessarily in the best interest for you. The price for being rich is being on constant alert and distrust against "luck" that isn't really luck, but a veiled threat. Edit: OK, I get it, not everywhere is Eastern Europe. Countries with old money have systems in place that mitigate this problem. (Although I am not so sure about mafia-heavy countries like Italy.)
- mordae 5y ago
  Yes. Having extra cash means you can eat out (saves 1+ hour a day), buy an automated vacuum, dishwasher (extra 30 minutes a day), get a car or use taxi (1-2 hours, depending on location), hire a personal assistant (better organization, hard to estimate), get better medical care (less pain = better concentration)... You also have access to specialists. You can hire a lawyer, people to help you with research, people to help you present yourself on social media. In the end, you can extend your day and improve your productivity significantly, resulting in more hours available "to get lucky" effectively. I mean, being lucky when washing dishes does not help a lot, but being lucky when shopping for business opportunities...
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Oh yes, but depending on where you live, these effects kick in way under the "being rich" threshold. (America with its strange and expensive healthcare being an outlier in the developed world, I understand that.) What I was speaking about was the simplistic "more of X, more of Y" approach of the OP, though I understand that it was mostly sarcastic in nature. I would even argue that there is a sweet spot where you have enough money to live comfortably, but not enough to be a promising scam/crime target.
  - eloisant 5y ago
    Additionally being rich gives you a network of friends who are also rich, resulting in even more opportunities. Your friend who owns a house in Chamonix and will let you use it for free during your vacations, your friends CEO of a big company who will give a high level internship to your son, your friends starting a new company and asking you early if you want to invest in it, etc...
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    Being rich is like getting extra at-bats in a baseball game. If you're normal or poor, you typically get one strike and you're out. You saved your capital, invested it, and if you fail, you're gone. When you're rich, you get to swing several times at the ball. When you miss, you fall back to your wealth/family to support you while you save up for your next swing. Then, when you finally hit, as you're running the bases you can boast to everyone about how self-made your success is. When you're filthy rich, you have infinite at-bats, and basically it doesn't matter how good a baseball player you are, you're going to win.
- Uberphallus 5y ago
  > Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. I'd say that's largely a new-rich problem. People born in rich families generally have the wealth management groomed in. I'm far from being rich, but that's something I'll teach my kids, as I believe one major driving factor in poor families staying poor is lack of education in economy and finance.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Now that is a good reply. Where I live (Czechia), pretty much everyone rich is new-rich, the tradition of old money was interrupted in 1948. That is a possible explanation for why I see this pattern fairly frequently, while other commenters seem to disagree.
    - Uberphallus 5y ago
      I can see that happening. In my country rich families don't fall for such things, except for the odd black sheep. Here you see that happening the most with lottery winners, particularly because people playing lotto are generally poor, and most among them financially illiterate. Top special price of the state lottery is around 500k€, and some stats showed that 90% of the winners lost 50% of that wealth within 2 years, while just putting it in some fund and sitting on that money would easily double their income while keeping their wealth. On that line, certain wealthy people tend to win the lotto a lot! It's a sign of fraud: they buy the tickets from the winners for a bigger amount than the prize, so they can insta-launder large sums of money. Then the actual winner sits on a slightly larger amount of money that can't be used for anything other than spending it, which financially is a terrible deal. But they all seem happy to do it, because they don't know any better.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      I've seen the stereotypical difference between new and old-rich many times: the first ones tend to show off and overstate their wealth, the latter do the very opposite.
  - mempko 5y ago
- dmitriid 5y ago
  To add to what the sibling comment already said: - If you don't have to work two jobs to survive, you have the time to pursue other things, and you're more "lucky". - If you have the ability to not work and can spend a year/two/five working out of a "garage", you're more "lucky" than those who can't. - If you have the ability to send your kids to an expensive college without you or them going into life-long debt, then those kids can create lasting connections (a.k.a. networking) and be significantly more "lucky" than those who can't. - If you have the money for good food, leisure, home, travel, medicine, etc., you're significantly more "lucky" than those who have to balance those things, and may not even have access to those things with all the consequences: chronic illnesses, stress etc.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    This is quite a huge spectrum of "rich" and "lucky". From absolutely basic things to expensive college. I cannot afford a vacation in Macchu Picchu, but it does not detract from my feeling of being lucky/unlucky. Local vacations in Europe or even in my own country are fine. If anything, Covid era was a good teacher in what really matters. And the college and networking is begging the question (IDK if I use the expression correctly). I do not doubt that Harvard graduates have it easier in general, but they are probably less prepared for a possible black swan event after which their degree won't have the weight it currently has. Shelling out enormous money for getting connections is a conformist (expensive and lazy) way of building career. I do not find much luck in that.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > does not detract from my feeling of being lucky/unlucky The question isn't about feeling lucky/unlucky. It doesn't matter if you can't take a vacation in Macchu Picchu. - Can you take a vacation any time you want? - Can you take a vacation for as long as you can? - Can you afford to take a full year (or more) to work on a passion project? Or on any project? On a startup idea? See, the more money you have, the more readily your answer will be yes to all the questions above. > Shelling out enormous money for getting connections is a conformist (expensive and lazy) way of building career. I do not find much luck in that. You can spend enormous money and have all the connections you need in four years. Or you can work your entire life and still never get those connections. > but they are probably less prepared for a possible black swan event Something tells me that Harvard graduates "survive" any and all black swan events significantly better than many others.
- taurath 5y ago
  Extremely rich people around rookie who aren’t rich are likely targets, because frankly on a whim that extremely rich person can solve most of the poor persons material problems in an instant. That’s why rich people live in secluded communities so they don’t have to deal with the consequences of obscene wealth.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
    The consequences of segregating society like this compound over time. This is why we're seeing a growing number of people unironically calling for the return of the guillotine. Kick a dog enough and it'll bite, or whatever.
    - taurath 5y ago
      When wealth disparity is already above that of 18th century France, one would probably be right to worry about the inevitable backlash, unless they can somehow keep people voting against their own economic interests for another few decades.
- krageon 5y ago
  > a constant target of other people When you're poor, you're also a constant target of other people. When you're rich, perhaps that single aspect is the same but everything else in your life is so much better that it's kind of disingenuous to ignore it.

qazpot 5y ago

In startups you have to be right only once.

mikro2nd 5y ago
In startups you get to be wrong only once.
- labatyd 5y ago
  What is that supposed to mean? Fail fast and move on is one of the mantras of the industry and as far as I can tell from reading HN most startup founders and employees all have numerous startups under their belt unless they accidently unicorned their very first one.
  - mikro2nd 5y ago
    It means, as you succinctly captured, that the startup is dead. The founders may well move on, but the original venture is toast. Point being: generally a startup doesn't have sufficient resource to recover from any serious missteps, particularly in the earlier parts of the game. All you can do is close the doors and move on to the next thing. Or get a job. The people survive (though frequently not without taking some damage, emotional, personal, financial or other) but the venture itself... no. source: Me. ~Veteran~ Survivor of 3 failed startups ;)
- dopidopHN 5y ago
  Dépends who you are and even more who you parents are. Or what type of jobs you were doing before. As opposed to a successful exit. No matter the above, it’s still a successful exit.
goodpoint 5y ago
...and be in the right country. And have money or a support network that helps you while chasing the unicorn. Or if you get sick.
iso1631 5y ago