3 ms·

What's the error on your estimate of how hard what he's done is? Several hundred percent? A thousand percent? What are the alternative ways of making $10m th

by pg 18y ago

What's the error on your estimate of how hard what he's done is? Several hundred percent? A thousand percent? What are the alternative ways of making $10m that you casually assume to exist? And how do you know how hard each of them is?

zimbabwe 18y ago
How does the quote go? "It's easy to be rich if all you want is to be rich"? If the goal is simply money, making it is not necessarily hard. There are many corporate positions that pay an obscene amount of money at the cost of being very dull. Somebody who enters a market with the goal of making money and nothing else is going to make a lot of money. Most of the routes available are much easier than the one that he picked, which requires a good idea and a lot of luck. Alex was not slamming Sam's achievement. He just said that from a business perspective rather than a hacker's perspective, the hacker route to riches is very fraught and few people ever make it. You're an outlier, as is Sam, but statistically speaking, more people fail as hacker/entrepreneurs than fail as high-powered corporate lawyers or as cutthroat schmoozers. Even the moderate successes, like Sam (moderate being relative to, say, the people who created Facebook/Microsoft/Google), aren't particularly better-off than the people who merely submit to the system and work their asses off, so the risk doesn't pay a higher financial reward. The only reward is that of personal fulfillment.
- divia 18y ago
  "Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of singleminded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money, to the utter exclusion of all other interests. They say that the age of opportunity has passed. Nonsense! Seven out of ten of the wealthiest men on this planet started life without a shilling--and there are plenty more such strivers on the way up. Such people are not stopped by high taxation nor even by socialism; they simply adapt themselves to new rules and presently they change the rules. But no premiere ballerina ever works harder, nor more narrowly, than a man who acquires riches." -A Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Alex3917 18y ago
"What's the error on your estimate of how hard what he's done is?" I don't like to think of hard in terms of the time required, but rather in terms of the skills needed and the things that need to happen to make the project a success. If you break down any project into a PERT chart, the best projects are the ones where each circle is capable of being realized in multiple ways. Whereas if you look at Sam's PERT chart, there are clearly a number of steps that are a one shot deal, where if they don't work the whole thing falls apart. For example if you can't partner with any carriers then the project is dead, unless you go around the carriers in which case your risk (and cost of capital) goes up so your upside goes down. "What are the alternative ways of making $10m that you casually assume to exist?" There are lots of ways. For example, doing LBOs on your own you can easily make 2-3 a year. The only problem is that you need the skills to know how to do this, and there are only a few hundred people at most who can serve as mentors to teach you at any given time. Running a fast food franchise is fairly predictable way to make 3-5m, so is starting a conference. If you start an ad network you can count on making 10+ if you know what you're doing. There are tons of very predictable ways to make money on your own, the problem is they require skills that you can only acquire by finding a mentor who knows what they're doing. (And finding good mentors is a hard to acquire skill on its own.)
- pg 18y ago
  If it were easy to make $10 million, there would be lots of 30 year olds with $10 million. My explanation for why there aren't is that it's actually quite hard to make $10 million. Your explanation is that while it's easy if you know certain magic spells, there are only a few people willing to teach you these spells. Please, honestly, don't plan your life based on this assumption. Assume it's hard to make lots of money, not that it's easy if you can somehow become an "insider."
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    When I say there are easier businesses, I don't mean easier in the sense that they don't involve just as much hard work. Rather, what I mean is that there is never any requisite step "and then a miracle occurs." For example, one can make money by getting 25,000 blog subscribers, using that to get a book deal, and using that to do consulting. It still takes an enormous amount of work, but at no step does it involve being chosen from on high.

by pg 18y ago

zimbabwe 18y ago

How does the quote go? "It's easy to be rich if all you want is to be rich"? If the goal is simply money, making it is not necessarily hard. There are many corporate positions that pay an obscene amount of money at the cost of being very dull. Somebody who enters a market with the goal of making money and nothing else is going to make a lot of money. Most of the routes available are much easier than the one that he picked, which requires a good idea and a lot of luck. Alex was not slamming Sam's achievement. He just said that from a business perspective rather than a hacker's perspective, the hacker route to riches is very fraught and few people ever make it. You're an outlier, as is Sam, but statistically speaking, more people fail as hacker/entrepreneurs than fail as high-powered corporate lawyers or as cutthroat schmoozers. Even the moderate successes, like Sam (moderate being relative to, say, the people who created Facebook/Microsoft/Google), aren't particularly better-off than the people who merely submit to the system and work their asses off, so the risk doesn't pay a higher financial reward. The only reward is that of personal fulfillment.

divia 18y ago
"Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of singleminded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money, to the utter exclusion of all other interests. They say that the age of opportunity has passed. Nonsense! Seven out of ten of the wealthiest men on this planet started life without a shilling--and there are plenty more such strivers on the way up. Such people are not stopped by high taxation nor even by socialism; they simply adapt themselves to new rules and presently they change the rules. But no premiere ballerina ever works harder, nor more narrowly, than a man who acquires riches." -A Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Alex3917 18y ago

"What's the error on your estimate of how hard what he's done is?" I don't like to think of hard in terms of the time required, but rather in terms of the skills needed and the things that need to happen to make the project a success. If you break down any project into a PERT chart, the best projects are the ones where each circle is capable of being realized in multiple ways. Whereas if you look at Sam's PERT chart, there are clearly a number of steps that are a one shot deal, where if they don't work the whole thing falls apart. For example if you can't partner with any carriers then the project is dead, unless you go around the carriers in which case your risk (and cost of capital) goes up so your upside goes down. "What are the alternative ways of making $10m that you casually assume to exist?" There are lots of ways. For example, doing LBOs on your own you can easily make 2-3 a year. The only problem is that you need the skills to know how to do this, and there are only a few hundred people at most who can serve as mentors to teach you at any given time. Running a fast food franchise is fairly predictable way to make 3-5m, so is starting a conference. If you start an ad network you can count on making 10+ if you know what you're doing. There are tons of very predictable ways to make money on your own, the problem is they require skills that you can only acquire by finding a mentor who knows what they're doing. (And finding good mentors is a hard to acquire skill on its own.)

pg 18y ago
If it were easy to make $10 million, there would be lots of 30 year olds with $10 million. My explanation for why there aren't is that it's actually quite hard to make $10 million. Your explanation is that while it's easy if you know certain magic spells, there are only a few people willing to teach you these spells. Please, honestly, don't plan your life based on this assumption. Assume it's hard to make lots of money, not that it's easy if you can somehow become an "insider."
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- Alex3917 18y ago
  When I say there are easier businesses, I don't mean easier in the sense that they don't involve just as much hard work. Rather, what I mean is that there is never any requisite step "and then a miracle occurs." For example, one can make money by getting 25,000 blog subscribers, using that to get a book deal, and using that to do consulting. It still takes an enormous amount of work, but at no step does it involve being chosen from on high.