Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#51

Post by Terry_B » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 3:29 AM UTC

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #46

Terry_B wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem so far has very much been that all of my ideas and efforts have been towards big, pie in the sky, breaking new ground type things. And of course, they usually don't get finished. I've been trying to get far more disciplined in looking for the more practical, boring problem/solutions that follow market trends etc. I just find it so hard to do because it doesn't excite me as much, even though I know there is…

Pick a really small subset of the problem and focus on that. It may seem boring at first, but let the chase of winning excite you, along with the money. Odds are you get bored because you're not interacting with customers and/or making money from it. I've fallen into this trap before. Seeing money come into your bank account or have customers contact you will get you insanely pumped. It's not about the money in a gre…

Thanks, I think you're spot on. The surprising thing is probably just how small that problem has to be when it's just you working on something in your spare time with all the things that need to get done to get to that first sale ASAP.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#52

Post by petercooper » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 3:33 AM UTC

Terry_B wrote: post #43

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That point could really be a post all by itself and it certainly varies situation to situation. Semantics + defining "what's a trend" also play into it. There's mass market everybody knows about it trends and then there's emerging trends. The mass market trends ones are the ones to avoid like you said. The good thing is what you said: market exists. There's money there, just make sure it isn't all taken up already.

My problem so far has very much been that all of my ideas and efforts have been towards big, pie in the sky, breaking new ground type things. And of course, they usually don't get finished. I've been trying to get far more disciplined in looking for the more practical, boring problem/solutions that follow market trends etc. I just find it so hard to do because it doesn't excite me as much, even though I know there is…

Perhaps an example of how "small" a trend can be could excite you enough to look out for things that are "bite sized" enough to try.

I'm pretty deep in the Ruby world. A trend that has emerged (and is almost becoming a cliché) over the past 18 months or so is selling Ruby related screencasts. Peepcode started selling screencasts about 3 years ago but no-one followed on in a serious fashion for quite a while (until Peepcode "proved" it could work, I say).

Now, there are at least 7 - 8 unique vendors of Ruby related screencasts I can think of. None are Peepcode scale at all, but I've seen sales figures and know that some of them, at least, have done reasonably well. Even the people behind the more humble attempts are happy, see: http://codeulate.com/2010/03/how-to-sell-a-hundred-screencas...

Now, "Ruby screencasts" is a crazily tiny niche. Not only is "programming" a tiny niche in the world of business, "Ruby programming" is a MINISCULE niche in the world of programming.. and Ruby programming screencasts is ULTRA CRAZY MOLECULAR LEVEL TINY!

If people have picked up on a trend in such a miniscule market and are making money with it, that's says, to me, that there are millions of teeny tiny niches in which you can start to perform very simple "tests" that make money and which, ultimately, could lead you to that million dollar concept or market.

Picking up on these teeny, tiny "trends" can be tricky, but is a lot easier in fields you're already absorbed in. If I had to pick out some trends just from reading Hacker News recently, these seem like a few areas someone could make some bucks in now/soonish: node.js consultancy/screencasts/books, Posterous theming, Flash-to-HTML5 tools/consultancy/screencasts/books, non-college oriented compsci education.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#53

Post by inmygarage » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 3:43 AM UTC

"Be so good they can't ignore you- I first heard this quote from Marc Andreessen, but he stole it from Steve Martin."

I'm pretty sure this is also a reference to Ender's Game.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#54

Post by Alex3917 » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 3:45 AM UTC

If all you care about is making a million dollars in three years, just franchise three or four restaurants.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#55

Post by ddemchuk » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 3:49 AM UTC

Come up with your own Acai Weight Loss Rebill with good affiliate payouts and connect with a network. You're going to be beat up with chargebacks and product manufacturing issues, but you can make a million dollars a week if you get enough affiliates.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#56

Post by cellis » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 3:50 AM UTC

Looking for incredibly boring, yet painful problems in industries like healthcare, oil/gas, real estate, and ecommerce.

Build a solid product using .NET or Java. Charge massive consulting fees and hire some slick salesmen.

I know several people who got rich doing this, but they were straight up businessmen, and thrived on solving boring, yet lucrative problems.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#57

Post by starkfist » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 3:54 AM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #54

If all you care about is making a million dollars in three years, just franchise three or four restaurants.

You would need to already have a million dollars to qualify to franchise three or four restaurants.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#58

Post by robmacarthur » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 3:57 AM UTC

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #5

I'm going to go and replace 3 years with a "short time frame". Some things to focus on: - Market opportunity- a million dollars isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly is a lot if the market opportunity is not large enough. Even if you put Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as founders in a new venture with a total market size of 10 million, there is no way they could become too wealthy without completely…

just signed up to say: great response. Whether the goal is a million or more or a new biz.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#59

Post by SamReidHughes » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:07 AM UTC

1. Devote your life to golf for 3 years. 2. Win the 2013 U.S. Open.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?

#60

Post by pfedor » Mon, Jun 21, 2010, 4:12 AM UTC

Get a job as a software engineer at a large company. Rent a small room, don't own a car, don't eat out, don't go to Hawaii for vacation, whatever it takes to save $250k in three years.

Then go to Vegas and put everything on red twice. (Metaphorically speaking -- I don't know if they'd allow a $500k bet in Vegas. But in the wonderful world of contemporary financial markets, there are instruments to make any kind of bet one might desire, and probably the house's cut will be even lower than in roulette.)

The obvious downside of this strategy is that it only works with the probability slightly less than 25%, otherwise you end up broke. But quite frankly, I doubt other ideas presented in this thread (make something people want, get on a TV show etc.) have better success rates. If there was a sure-fire way of getting from $0 to $1M in three years everyone would be doing it.

If you're OK not only with ending up broke in case of a failure, but even being in debt, then you can increase you odds of success even further by using leverage.