4 ms·

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

by 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.
- wheels 18y ago
  I don't think you'll find many people that have saved $10 million from consulting (and certainly not a book deal), though if you were doing really well, and not spending anything, you might be able to do it in 20 years, which doesn't sound very "easy" to me.
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    Then pick any other example. How about Scribd. There's easily 10m worth of upside, but no single point of failure. IMHO this makes it a better business than Loopt. Not easier in the sense of requires less work, but easier again in the sense that if it doesn't go viral the first day they can keep iterating until it does. And maybe it never will, but the chances of success are still much better because there are more options along the critical path. edit: At any point if Scribd hadn't been able to add a zero to their traffic stats they could have leveraged their asset to do something slightly different. Loopt never had this luxury. If at any point they couldn't add a zero then the whole project was worth nothing. My point was that someone more experienced would have known this and chosen to start a business more like Scribd and less like Loopt. (If they only cared about the money.)
    - byrneseyeview 18y ago
      The problem with this thinking is that businesses don't exist in isolation. No points of failure mean no barriers to entry: if it's a matter of grinding through a pre-defined process, anyone can theoretically do it -- and if someone can raise a VC round and employ ten times as many grinders as you, they may catch up to you. But someone competing with Loopt has different problem entirely. To even have a hope of competing, they have to make a deal with a carrier. And the number of available carriers drops as Loopt grabs more of them -- which gets easier with each one they get. When you're at the bottom trying to catch up, the fact that Loopt scaled a cliff instead of a foothill looks like a smart decision.
      - Alex3917 18y ago
        "No points of failure mean no barriers to entry" Take my blog -> book -> consulting example. Right now if you have 25k blog followers and you are willing to spend 50k out of pocket it's pretty easy to game the system to become an NYT bestseller for one week. If everyone did it then the the numbers needed would be higher, but right now the number of people willing to do the two prerequisite steps is low enough that this is about right. There is no point of failure; if your tribe isn't growing fast enough you can try a different blogging strategy, and even if your book doesn't make the bestseller list it still grows your tribe and makes it easier for your second book to become a bestseller. But the barrier to entry is still quite large because building a following sufficiently big is more work than most people are willing to do. Ramit Sethi did exactly this a couple months ago, and IIRC it took him ~18 months and thousands of hours. Huge corporations are never going to pay Ramit millions of dollars to teach them about personal finance, but it's easy to see how he could be making tons of money if he'd instead built an asset designed for that. You have a good point that there are some advantages to Loopt's strategy. But even still, if you have the choice of starting any business in the world, why start one where you have to put up with that? Is the benefit of a higher barrier to entry really worth the risk it will fail entirely? Sure they have massive upside, but there are lots of other business with massive upside where you don't have to hope for a miracle.
        byrneseyeview 18y ago

by pg 18y ago

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.

wheels 18y ago
I don't think you'll find many people that have saved $10 million from consulting (and certainly not a book deal), though if you were doing really well, and not spending anything, you might be able to do it in 20 years, which doesn't sound very "easy" to me.
- Alex3917 18y ago
  Then pick any other example. How about Scribd. There's easily 10m worth of upside, but no single point of failure. IMHO this makes it a better business than Loopt. Not easier in the sense of requires less work, but easier again in the sense that if it doesn't go viral the first day they can keep iterating until it does. And maybe it never will, but the chances of success are still much better because there are more options along the critical path. edit: At any point if Scribd hadn't been able to add a zero to their traffic stats they could have leveraged their asset to do something slightly different. Loopt never had this luxury. If at any point they couldn't add a zero then the whole project was worth nothing. My point was that someone more experienced would have known this and chosen to start a business more like Scribd and less like Loopt. (If they only cared about the money.)
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    The problem with this thinking is that businesses don't exist in isolation. No points of failure mean no barriers to entry: if it's a matter of grinding through a pre-defined process, anyone can theoretically do it -- and if someone can raise a VC round and employ ten times as many grinders as you, they may catch up to you. But someone competing with Loopt has different problem entirely. To even have a hope of competing, they have to make a deal with a carrier. And the number of available carriers drops as Loopt grabs more of them -- which gets easier with each one they get. When you're at the bottom trying to catch up, the fact that Loopt scaled a cliff instead of a foothill looks like a smart decision.
    - Alex3917 18y ago
      "No points of failure mean no barriers to entry" Take my blog -> book -> consulting example. Right now if you have 25k blog followers and you are willing to spend 50k out of pocket it's pretty easy to game the system to become an NYT bestseller for one week. If everyone did it then the the numbers needed would be higher, but right now the number of people willing to do the two prerequisite steps is low enough that this is about right. There is no point of failure; if your tribe isn't growing fast enough you can try a different blogging strategy, and even if your book doesn't make the bestseller list it still grows your tribe and makes it easier for your second book to become a bestseller. But the barrier to entry is still quite large because building a following sufficiently big is more work than most people are willing to do. Ramit Sethi did exactly this a couple months ago, and IIRC it took him ~18 months and thousands of hours. Huge corporations are never going to pay Ramit millions of dollars to teach them about personal finance, but it's easy to see how he could be making tons of money if he'd instead built an asset designed for that. You have a good point that there are some advantages to Loopt's strategy. But even still, if you have the choice of starting any business in the world, why start one where you have to put up with that? Is the benefit of a higher barrier to entry really worth the risk it will fail entirely? Sure they have massive upside, but there are lots of other business with massive upside where you don't have to hope for a miracle.
      - byrneseyeview 18y ago