Why Should I Start a Startup?

Sometimes people actually love each other. I'm lucky in that regard.

The state of my back is thankfully entirely within my control. I stay fit, and that includes keeping my back strong and loose, as well as investing in a good chair and monitor stands (considering a standing desk). I have no desire to walk into work with my head practically below my shoulders like some of my older co-workers.

As for business opportunities, I see no reason why there should be fewer in 10 years. Different sure, but likely just as many. There are still plenty of areas of growth in technology, no reason to think they'll be dwindling in 10 years.

Younger single people do have some advantages. They can undercut experienced professionals on salary and can move at the drop of a hat. Which is why if/when I start a business I won't be competing with 20-somethings on writing CRUD apps. :)

But yeah, 1m/yr is hard if you don't own stakes in the business. And if you make that much as a partner at mc or EY for instance, it's because you have boughts shares of the firm when entering the partnership and that you've worked looong hours for over a decade.

Maybe being super high up at big tech firms through earned stocks ? Well, once you've had a high position at a big tech firm, you can easily go into consulting / start doing conferences and start making real cash. But that'll hardly be before 35-45 years old I don't think.

You may think you mean well, but your original comment came across as ugly and dismissive and personally attacking. I didn't provide any evidence that I am some extreme outlier because a) that wasn't the point and b) people who know me already know I am twice exceptional and don't need that elaborated on.

You also fail to understand some basics about statistics and life, the universe and everything and that is this: That which is a longshot is unlikely to happen to any specific individual, but guaranteed to happen to someone. So if it is "one in a million odds," with a human population of 7 billion people, there should be 7000 such people somewhere on earth.

Given that this is the internet, you can easily run into any one of those 7000. Like you, they just need an internet connection, which is as common as dirt these days. You could even stumble into a forum that, for some reason, tends to aggregate such individuals. In which case, dozens, hundreds or even thousands of the people actively participating in the forum could well be that "1 in a million" outlier.

You completely misread my original comment and then personally attacked me and told me that I am basically an idiot who just likes the narrative they are selling. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I was Director of Community Life for a few months for The TAG Project. While I was director, I got support for attending a gifted conference in the Boston area and I heard speak or met some of the luminaries in the gifted field, such as Kathi Kearney.

Prior to the conference, Kathi Kearney was already internet familiar with me due to my work for The TAG Project, and we had a nice little conversation following her presentation. Based in part on that conversation, I strongly suspect that my oldest son's IQ can be guestimated as "probably over 200, possibly waaaaay over." He also has such big problem areas that he was almost an idiot-savant when he was a child, and I really had to work with him to get him functional in some areas.

We will never know what his IQ actually is because you cannot accurately peg an IQ that high with adult testing and he is now 30. Last I heard, such people need to be properly assessed by a qualified professional specializing in such things by about age 7 in order to have any kind of accurate IQ number (and he was 12 before he was identified as gifted, in part due to his poor school performance).

So hand-wavy guestimates based on mom's discussion with some luminary in the gifted field is as good as it will ever get. That and perhaps someday he will be famous for his work and widely lauded as a "genius." That would be cool, but I honestly don't care if it goes that way or not. Such things are not hugely important to me. They never were, which is why I gave up my National Merit Scholarship in my teens, dropped out of college and went and did the wife and mom thing for a lot of years. (shrug)

I am not responsible for strangers on the internet reading my comments and twisting them to mean something I did not intend at all. I have been online long enough to know that it is not possible to open my mouth online at all without someone, somewhere wildly misinterpreting my words and having zero desire to make a good faith effort to actually understand my point. I do my best to frame things carefully, but, to some extent, I have simply had to make my peace with the fact that people are gonna people and there is nothing I can do about that.