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Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

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11–20 of 138 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#11

"How do I turn that into 1 million?" Iterate this last year ten times. ^_^ On a more serious suggestion, try to stick to something a bit longer, make a product, iterate it some times and finally take profit from it. BTW, What happened to your poker server?

I don't play poker and I'm not interested in learning. I inherited the software at http://sourceforge.net/projects/openpoker/ and tried to fix it. I then thought I'd write a much better server quickly.

I ended up writing a server that's scalable and robust but incompatible with the original Delphi client. Part of it is that the contract programmers blackmailed me into Delphi (C++ will cost you more!) and I was greedy. The other part is that they are serializing Delphi objects and shipping them down the wire. Supporting that would be a nightmare.

It's hard to sell a server without a client and my server is pretty bare bones too. There's only Texas Hold'em, no tournaments. There's no accounting, payment processing, affiliate tracking, etc. I tried to sell it as a base people could build around but not very successfully. I broke even on development but that's it.

Ultimately, poker people are fine with running a 200K solution on scores of servers that handle just thousands of clients. There's not much interest in squeezing that into a handful of servers since marketing expenses of a new poker room dwarf those of hardware and software.

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#12
Ahoy! Sailing is great, I've got a personal goal to do the SHTP in 2014.

You have a terrible investment track record and a good programming track record. Go with your strength. Since you have a short attention span, you should focus on short projects that you can ship quickly.

Bring maritime weather / charts to the iphone, I'd buy that :-)

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#13

I'd agree with your friend. You obviously have some skills, or you wouldn't have been able to earn the 100K. So, given the recent windfall, there ought to be a way to use the 100K to magnify your income. What's the bottleneck in your regular business? What is it that is keeping you from having a blockbuster year each year? Or, even better, having a double-the-blockbuster year? Once you've identified the constraint, t…

The bottleneck is that I sell a service and I can only offer so much of it. Also, my base rate is 100 EUR/hr, about $125, although I always quote a fixed price.

I found a niche in writing Mac device drivers for a big company this year. I had to buy a hardware USB analyzer and IDA Pro to reverse-engineer a good chunk of LabVIEW so I was able to charge a good price for that project.

I could raise my base rate and charge more for projects (fixed price) but that doesn't scale and there are only 24 hours in a day.

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#14
post #4

Let me ask you a question, given your experience which is easier to bet on ..yourself or someone else?

I used to run an offshore development company out of the US and even went through a round of VC at ~1.25mm post-money. The round did not go past a bridge loan since the internet bubble was bursting at about this time.

I can judge technical skills but I don't think I'm a good judge of character. I'd rather bet on myself.

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#15

Ahoy! Sailing is great, I've got a personal goal to do the SHTP in 2014. You have a terrible investment track record and a good programming track record. Go with your strength. Since you have a short attention span, you should focus on short projects that you can ship quickly. Bring maritime weather / charts to the iphone, I'd buy that :-)

Some of that already exists, check out the App Store. I'm thinking an iPad would make a decent chart plotter, though :-). Now, if I could only find a weather-proof enclosure!

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#16
post #6

Looks like your trading experiments have not worked out so well. Probably because you seem to be a fan of market timing... good luck with that. I think you need to take a longer term view with your investments. I also think your friend is right - you should bet on yourself. I worked in the financial services industry and I know first hand how horrible 90pct of the software is in that space. It's a market full of poor…

I left Wall St with the semi-official title of "Director of Prime Brokerage Technology". I did work on the technology budget and spoke to vendors. I simply don't have the organization required to service Wall St.

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#18
Timescales: How long do you have to turn your 100k into 1mm?

(I'm assuming here we're not considering inflation. )

If you need it in 10 years, you're going to need an annualized 25% or so rate of return. That's unlikely.

If you need it in 25 years, you can get by with 10%. That's definitely possible, if you follow good principles.

On the other hand, if you can put in an extra 50k a year, You should have close to $1mm in 10 years. (550-600k in investment, 400k in growth).

Given that you hate people and are super smart, and have a self described penchant for gambling, I would suggest you not try to grow your business, and also that you stay away from the stock market as long as you think timing it is a great plan.

All that adds up to (in my mind) buying some real estate. You live in a beautiful vacation spot, and could find property managers so that you don't have to deal with tenants.

Your 100k could easily buy a 300k small property, with some left over for unforeseen problems. Try it! It won't fluctuate in value like your previous stock market purchases, that's for sure.

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#19

Timescales: How long do you have to turn your 100k into 1mm? (I'm assuming here we're not considering inflation. ) If you need it in 10 years, you're going to need an annualized 25% or so rate of return. That's unlikely. If you need it in 25 years, you can get by with 10%. That's definitely possible, if you follow good principles. On the other hand, if you can put in an extra 50k a year, You should have close to $1mm…

p.s. Flipping real estate -- eventually, you're going to want income. Transaction costs for real estate are high, man. I guess my major advice is "Slow down. Value stability and income. Keep socking away the money, and invest it in areas unlinked to your primary earning potential (programming)."

Re: Ask HN: How do I turn 100K into 1 million?

#20

I'd agree with your friend. You obviously have some skills, or you wouldn't have been able to earn the 100K. So, given the recent windfall, there ought to be a way to use the 100K to magnify your income. What's the bottleneck in your regular business? What is it that is keeping you from having a blockbuster year each year? Or, even better, having a double-the-blockbuster year? Once you've identified the constraint, t…

The bottleneck is that I sell a service and I can only offer so much of it. Also, my base rate is 100 EUR/hr, about $125, although I always quote a fixed price. I found a niche in writing Mac device drivers for a big company this year. I had to buy a hardware USB analyzer and IDA Pro to reverse-engineer a good chunk of LabVIEW so I was able to charge a good price for that project. I could raise my base rate and charg…

> there are only 24 hours in a day

Per person.

Trade on your name? You are an A+ player. You must be turning work away. Take on more work than you can handle and farm it out to A-/B+ players.

Consultants don't scale but consultancies can benefit from scale to some small degree.

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