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

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

#71

Post by smokinn »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #27
petercooper wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love this post, but I'm going to argue against one of your points: If it's a "trend", it's too late I disagree. In fact, if something is a trend, it's a guarantee that a market (of some kind) exists and it can save you a lot of time and research. Most big markets have large numbers of high value competitors and they're not all pioneers. Indeed, most companies with significant turnover were not pioneers in their field…

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.

Another lucrative possibility in trends is stagnation.

The market very often has been there quite a while with major players in it that are concentrating on monetizing their current offerings while being completely blind to the fact that new possibilities are now available. This tends to happen to startups that have "matured", generally replaced all their leadership and now have very little internal vision.

If you can spot one of these opportunities it can be a true goldmine.

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

#72

Post by megablast »

nostrademons wrote: post #47
megablast wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but picking a deadline means that you put a time limit on the effort, and have a good guide on when you should just give up. If it is not working for you, you should give up and try something new, but when you are involved heavily in something, it can seem like the payout is just around the corner.

You have way more information on whether the effort is likely to succeed when the deadline rolls around than when you initially set the deadline. If the payout really is just around the corner, it's silly to give up on it just because an arbitrary deadline rolled around. I found it's much better to establish firm hypotheses when I begin a project, and then as I plan out the project, make sure that the hypotheses will…

Yes, well of course. But you can get yourself into the situation where the payout always seems to be just around the corner, when get into the sunk-costs trap.

The deadline should give you a change to step back and properly evaluate your situation at a specified time, hopefully with some external help.

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

#73

Post by rriepe »

ZombieCoaster wrote: post #17
grandalf wrote: post #10

In parts of Africa you can set up a artesanal diamond mine with a shovel and a strainer. Spend a few weeks there finding diamonds, then smuggle them back to the US and sell them. Document this whole process on video, then sell the rights to a documentary and do a book deal when you get back. Estimated time to completion: 4 months.

how do you not get arrested after publicly admitting you did something illegal?

Look up the statute of limitations.

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

#74

Post by omfut »

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…

wow this is one of the best comment i have read. very good information. Thanks.

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

#76

Post by nandemo »

babyboy808 wrote: post #3
slater wrote: post #2

Why three years? IMHO, you're focussing on the wrong part of it all.

Good question. But why not 3 years? As we all know, let's say if we are given an assignment for college to do and we are given a week to complete it, almost always, I will start the assignment about 3/4 days into the week and then as the deadline looms closer, the real work happens! So in answer to your question, if I said 10 years, I would be focused on 10 years :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law

The analogy doesn't hold. The problem is not so much that your school assignment is 1 million times easier. There's also:

1) There's not such a huge variation in the time necessary to complete an assignment. Your professor knows that some people can finish it in a couple of days but others need a whole week. But it's much harder to estimate the time to get $1M.

2) You can finish a school assignment on your own. Assuming you have access to the necessary resources (books, net, etc) it depends only on you. You don't need any luck to finish it. But to get rich you need favorable market conditions, meeting the right investors, hiring the right people, the government not screwing you up, etc, i.e. "luck".

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

#77

Post by bemmu »

lisper wrote: post #18

My advice: forget the deadline. Imposing a deadline on a result that is largely beyond your control will serve no constructive purpose. You should only set deadlines on things that are within your power to control, e.g. I will finish X by time Y. But putting a deadline on the market to respond is just silly. If you want to be a millionaire, here's the procedure: 1. Pick an activity that you think will make you a mill…

Without a time limit you could become a millionaire by flipping burgers for 50 years.

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

#78

Post by tjmc »

ojbyrne wrote: post #48
waivej wrote: post #45

Don't make something people want. Instead take away a problem that people don't want to deal with. The uglier and stinkier the problem, the better. Then price very high and look for markets where people have more money.

Can you name some ugly, stinky problem that we haven't already farmed out to the third world?

Visited the Gulf of Mexico lately?

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

#79

Post by gaborcselle »

pfedor wrote: post #60

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 be…

Your method works, but even if successful, you'll end up at $1M pre-tax, out of which $750 are gambling income. Gambling income is taxable in the US. If you win that much you might have to pay estimated taxes on that, so you'd only actually have $1M for a few months.

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

#80

Post by tjmc »

chrisbennet wrote: post #35

Why? Why do you want to be millionaire? A little introspection and self knowledge might lead you to your real goals more directly. I've always been wildly successful at my goal - which was to be happy.

This is a very legitimate question and it's disappointing to see it modded down. The people in our industry who only care about the money have names like Balmer and Ellison. Are they running the kinds of businesses that people here aspire to? Do you look to these people as your inspiration? How boring.
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