9 ms·

I like how she skipped the part where one of the requirements was: found a company during the dotcom explosion and sell out before it crashes. Zip2 would've be

by tw04 12y ago

I like how she skipped the part where one of the requirements was: found a company during the dotcom explosion and sell out before it crashes. Zip2 would've been a complete bust in 2003, and he wouldn't have had the funds to move on to his subsequent ventures. The guy obviously has a lot of great ides, but lots of people have great ideas. Without the financial backing... good luck.

bpodgursky 12y ago
> "And good luck. (You'll need that too.)" I think that acknowledges that luck is also a prerequisite.
- balabaster 12y ago
  Little luck is needed. All that is needed is a gap in the market, a human problem to be solved that people are willing to pay enough money for and it will be leveraged. Luck his nothing to do with it... except for the luck of being gifted with the right mindset to be able to pull it off.
  - marssaxman 12y ago
    The luck is in having the resources necessary to apply the idea. Many people can identify a gap in the market which could form a profitable business, but in order to actually build that business you need capital and connections.
    - balabaster 12y ago
      Or the ability to make those connections to get the capital. All the stepping stones are there offering many paths to success, you just have to be willing to do the leg work to get from one to the next.
      - marssaxman 12y ago
        These "stepping stones" are not equally distributed, and not every jump will succeed. It is not reasonable to ignore the role of external factors in the practicality of achieving success.
    - balabaster 12y ago
      also, having resources and being resourceful are 2 different things. Someone who is resourceful will find the resources. Someone who is not resourceful will settle with the excuses that they didn't have the resources.
      - marssaxman 12y ago
        Perhaps so, but lifetimes are not infinite. Even if every resource is theoretically acquirable by every person, what for some people would just be a trivial first step toward the ultimate goal would count for other people as a lifetime task in itself.
  - brianpan 12y ago
    I don't see how it's not mostly luck. Being gifted with the right mindset is not a small exception. That's pretty huge. Of a hundred million babies born this year, they do NOT all have the same chance of becoming a billionaire. That's luck.
  - mruniverse 12y ago
    Seems like luck is most of it. Luck to be born at this time, in a country with some freedom, to be healthy enough, etc.
DenisM 12y ago
Which is one of the positive effects of financial bubbles - they create irrational local excess of cash that is largely wasted, but every now and again it begets a new life form that couldn't come to existence in a more rational bubble-free universe.
- balabaster 12y ago
  The smart person [like Elon et. al.] knows when to jump on the bandwagon of the bubble and jump off before the bubble bursts. Leveraging everyone else's wasteful behaviour for their own gain.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  Much of the infrastructure and development in Florida resulted from a bubble. http://www.economist.com/node/12792903 http://www.economist.com/node/12792903
balabaster 12y ago
But he had the wherewithal to leverage his abilities at the time to get what he needed to continue. It's easy to knock this back as chance, but clearly he's shrewd enough to get where he wants to get. I take my hat off to him. Each of us has a unique blend of skills, talents, traits and personality. It is up to each of us to figure out how to leverage those to get what we value most in life. If money is what you're after, it's there for the taking, all you have to do is figure out how, if it's power, that's there too. Nothing worth having in life comes easily, it's hard work, that's a given, you just need to figure out how to get it - and that's the game that makes this life so interesting.
- tw04 12y ago
  I'm sorry but it had wayyy more to do with chance than that. He happened to be in California in 1995 when the bubble started. He was of an age where he could take a chance at a startup rather than have a 9-5 job. If Musk were 40 with 3 kids and a mortgage and he had packed everything up to move to California to try to create a startup and make it big, I'd totally agree with you. The fact he was at the right place at the right time at the right age isn't anything that was under his control in the least (outside of perhaps choosing to go to Standford over other options available to him).
  - balabaster 12y ago
    He wouldn't have done it that way. You're not looking at him with a wide enough lens. People who are rich aren't rich by chance. They're rich because they observe the way things are, they take the opportunities that are presented to them as they are able to take them. Sure, he was in California in 1995, he was in the position to take a chance at a startup rather than have a 9-5 he jumped on the bandwagon. If he were 40 with 3 kids and he was just as shrewd as he was when he got his start, he'd have jumped on a different bandwagon - perhaps the realty bandwagon, become a realtor, flipped multibillion dollar houses on loans and still got rich, or he'd have become a stock broker, made himself money that way and turned that into a billion dollars - who knows, the opportunities are endless. You've just gotta look at things in the right way. Self made billionaires are opportunists. They are smart. They are shrewd. They look at the big picture. For every reason they're told they can't do something, they find a solution, they don't see obstacles as deal breakers, they're just speed bumps, irritations that need to be resolved/removed, hoops to be jumped through to get where they're going. They look for the next possibility and insert themselves where they need to in order to leverage what they have to get where they need to go. So you see it doesn't have as much to do with chance as you might think. What was chance was the bubble occurring. But Elon making use of that opportunity when it presented itself was anything but chance, that was all Elon. He spied an opportunity and rode it until he was shrewd enough to get off the elevator... which is what he's still doing. Finding opportunity and leveraging it to make his next billion dollars.
andrewtbham 12y ago
> found a company during the dotcom explosion and sell out before it crashes. you can say this about a lot of people... pg even, but paypal went public in 2002. i would argue he did the opposite, elon musk remarkably sold a company in the wake of the dot com crash.
- gdilla 12y ago
  True, to ebay, a place where people go to sell their goods; a much needed source of income in a recession.
throwaway12357 12y ago
luck is part of the adventure and so are WFIO moments. It's how you manage them that makes the difference. but it's like they say, once you're lucky, twice you're good. And Elon Musk is damn good.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
So your task is to do the same in this bubble :-) Forgive me if that seems a bit snarky but her point is not "you want it" but "deeply thinking about the problem." And when you do that, and you discover that the solution you have to a problem seems to be wildly over valued with respect to your understanding of it, you sell out because you know that when the market stops being irrational that value will evaporate. You could do like Pincus, found a gaming company and make sure you can pull out $200M on your own before the rest of the world catches up. Or Mason w/ Groupon. There is a lot more work than lottery in there.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

by tw04 12y ago

bpodgursky 12y ago

> "And good luck. (You'll need that too.)" I think that acknowledges that luck is also a prerequisite.

balabaster 12y ago
Little luck is needed. All that is needed is a gap in the market, a human problem to be solved that people are willing to pay enough money for and it will be leveraged. Luck his nothing to do with it... except for the luck of being gifted with the right mindset to be able to pull it off.
- marssaxman 12y ago
  The luck is in having the resources necessary to apply the idea. Many people can identify a gap in the market which could form a profitable business, but in order to actually build that business you need capital and connections.
  - balabaster 12y ago
    Or the ability to make those connections to get the capital. All the stepping stones are there offering many paths to success, you just have to be willing to do the leg work to get from one to the next.
    - marssaxman 12y ago
      These "stepping stones" are not equally distributed, and not every jump will succeed. It is not reasonable to ignore the role of external factors in the practicality of achieving success.
  - balabaster 12y ago
    also, having resources and being resourceful are 2 different things. Someone who is resourceful will find the resources. Someone who is not resourceful will settle with the excuses that they didn't have the resources.
    - marssaxman 12y ago
      Perhaps so, but lifetimes are not infinite. Even if every resource is theoretically acquirable by every person, what for some people would just be a trivial first step toward the ultimate goal would count for other people as a lifetime task in itself.
- brianpan 12y ago
  I don't see how it's not mostly luck. Being gifted with the right mindset is not a small exception. That's pretty huge. Of a hundred million babies born this year, they do NOT all have the same chance of becoming a billionaire. That's luck.
- mruniverse 12y ago
  Seems like luck is most of it. Luck to be born at this time, in a country with some freedom, to be healthy enough, etc.

DenisM 12y ago

Which is one of the positive effects of financial bubbles - they create irrational local excess of cash that is largely wasted, but every now and again it begets a new life form that couldn't come to existence in a more rational bubble-free universe.

balabaster 12y ago
The smart person [like Elon et. al.] knows when to jump on the bandwagon of the bubble and jump off before the bubble bursts. Leveraging everyone else's wasteful behaviour for their own gain.
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
Much of the infrastructure and development in Florida resulted from a bubble. http://www.economist.com/node/12792903 http://www.economist.com/node/12792903

balabaster 12y ago

But he had the wherewithal to leverage his abilities at the time to get what he needed to continue. It's easy to knock this back as chance, but clearly he's shrewd enough to get where he wants to get. I take my hat off to him. Each of us has a unique blend of skills, talents, traits and personality. It is up to each of us to figure out how to leverage those to get what we value most in life. If money is what you're after, it's there for the taking, all you have to do is figure out how, if it's power, that's there too. Nothing worth having in life comes easily, it's hard work, that's a given, you just need to figure out how to get it - and that's the game that makes this life so interesting.

tw04 12y ago
I'm sorry but it had wayyy more to do with chance than that. He happened to be in California in 1995 when the bubble started. He was of an age where he could take a chance at a startup rather than have a 9-5 job. If Musk were 40 with 3 kids and a mortgage and he had packed everything up to move to California to try to create a startup and make it big, I'd totally agree with you. The fact he was at the right place at the right time at the right age isn't anything that was under his control in the least (outside of perhaps choosing to go to Standford over other options available to him).
- balabaster 12y ago
  He wouldn't have done it that way. You're not looking at him with a wide enough lens. People who are rich aren't rich by chance. They're rich because they observe the way things are, they take the opportunities that are presented to them as they are able to take them. Sure, he was in California in 1995, he was in the position to take a chance at a startup rather than have a 9-5 he jumped on the bandwagon. If he were 40 with 3 kids and he was just as shrewd as he was when he got his start, he'd have jumped on a different bandwagon - perhaps the realty bandwagon, become a realtor, flipped multibillion dollar houses on loans and still got rich, or he'd have become a stock broker, made himself money that way and turned that into a billion dollars - who knows, the opportunities are endless. You've just gotta look at things in the right way. Self made billionaires are opportunists. They are smart. They are shrewd. They look at the big picture. For every reason they're told they can't do something, they find a solution, they don't see obstacles as deal breakers, they're just speed bumps, irritations that need to be resolved/removed, hoops to be jumped through to get where they're going. They look for the next possibility and insert themselves where they need to in order to leverage what they have to get where they need to go. So you see it doesn't have as much to do with chance as you might think. What was chance was the bubble occurring. But Elon making use of that opportunity when it presented itself was anything but chance, that was all Elon. He spied an opportunity and rode it until he was shrewd enough to get off the elevator... which is what he's still doing. Finding opportunity and leveraging it to make his next billion dollars.

andrewtbham 12y ago

> found a company during the dotcom explosion and sell out before it crashes. you can say this about a lot of people... pg even, but paypal went public in 2002. i would argue he did the opposite, elon musk remarkably sold a company in the wake of the dot com crash.

gdilla 12y ago
True, to ebay, a place where people go to sell their goods; a much needed source of income in a recession.

throwaway12357 12y ago

luck is part of the adventure and so are WFIO moments. It's how you manage them that makes the difference. but it's like they say, once you're lucky, twice you're good. And Elon Musk is damn good.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

So your task is to do the same in this bubble :-) Forgive me if that seems a bit snarky but her point is not "you want it" but "deeply thinking about the problem." And when you do that, and you discover that the solution you have to a problem seems to be wildly over valued with respect to your understanding of it, you sell out because you know that when the market stops being irrational that value will evaporate. You could do like Pincus, found a gaming company and make sure you can pull out $200M on your own before the rest of the world catches up. Or Mason w/ Groupon. There is a lot more work than lottery in there.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]