1. Pay off everything for me and my closest family.
2. Buy house on Hawaii and in Whistler.
3. Batmobile.
4. Try to solve a big, hard problem that I didn't have the means to before. Perhaps not one as "pie in the sky" as "make solar power work" or "cure cancer" but something along those lines.
Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
51–60 of 157 posts
Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's it? If you had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?
Damn straight, man. I've always wanted to do that. I figure if I were a millionaire, I could hook that up. Chicks dig guys with money. http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Office-Space.html
Well not all chicks...
Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#53Maybe I'd found a zoo.
May I ask why? I suppose the answer is "why not?", isn't it? :-)
Because most zoos I have been to belong to one of these two categories:
- Unbelievably boring places with not enough fun and way too much education. You bring your kids to the zoo so they can learn something, not so some boring guide and put them to sleep with stuff that would probably put a zoology professor off.
- Shamelessly profit minded. SeaWorld, I'm looking at you. Blatant animal abuse for the "entertainment" of the masses - come see our lazy, fat animals roam about ready to expire at a moment's notice, but feel free to buy more overpriced feed so you can keep stuffing their gullets! What? Educational factor? Whuzzat?
Maybe I wouldn't create a zoo if I were rich, but it wouldn't be a waste of time. The world desperately needs zoos and aquariums that are able to educate as well as entertain.
Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#54Grow my hair long (again) and get someone good to make it look stylish and neat. Buy some nice clothes, such that I don't have to worry about not having any sense of clothes.
No office dress code, woohoo.
Do some startup funding on useful wearable keyboards, better software for small helpdesks/teams (I have plenty of ideas), better software/user interfaces for virtual desktops, but with grouped applications by user task.
Inject self replicating nanobots under all of Africa, acting as a synthetic water table, pumping, purifying, filtering seawater from the coast and bringing it inland, then piping it up to the surface.
Secretly hire a contracting company to rip out the traffic lights at a nearby road island and replace them with my new design. Keep stats and, when convincing enough, announce the change to all and pressure to get all traffic lights in the country moved over.
Bring some ultra-fantastic business internet access to this area for a reasonable cost, spam the town with wifi and build a couple of good datacenters around, buy various shop facilities around the town and surreptitiously start selling the right kinds of interesting things, buy a couple of central indoor spaces and run barcamp/unconvention/XYZcons regularly. Try to seed and cultivate a high tech, hacker friendly yet quirky and personal friendly cafe style environment around here. Or maybe in another country with better weather. Or maybe both.
Daydream, in other words, while feeling awkward, guilty and undeserving.
Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Damn straight, man. I've always wanted to do that. I figure if I were a millionaire, I could hook that up. Chicks dig guys with money. http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Office-Space.html
Well not all chicks...
Well, the type that double up on a guy like me do.
Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#56Join Esther Dyson in funding Fluidinfo.
Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#572 chicks
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#58Get a house in the Santa Cruz mountains large enough to hold a decent sized library and a miniature lab/computer history museum, invest the money to get a speedy Internet connection there. For the next few years spend the rest of the time reading, writing code (especially code that can't immediately be "something people want": design and write programming languages and OSes "just for fun") doing photography (build out a proper studio and dark room) and collect historical/esoteric hardware (e.g. PDP-10s, VAXen).
Then in few years, attempt another start-up (but without risking my entire wealth on it - won't put more $100k into it) and if that fails, take a job (without regards to pay or seniority of position) at a research lab / university / technology company I believe in.
Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#59Re: Ask HN: you're rich, now what?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Knowing when to quit is also a skill. Especially applicable to professional sports.
Athletes peak in their late 20s and early 30s. In intellectual endeavors (despite prominent counterexamples, half of whom were like Keats or Galois and died on ascent) most people peak in their late 40s or 50s. So there isn't the same call to quit after a few years of success.
Interesting... what about endeavors where the biggest factor in the eventual success is commitment to the venture? I think that as one grows older, one is more critical of oneself and thus liable of giving up earlier.