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How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

nav.al

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Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#81

Post by vl »

nostrademons wrote: post #72
JamesBarney wrote: post #15

Anyone one of his thousand claims could be an interesting article. For instance "equity is a better way to get rich than working". Is it, I bet the average googler accumulates more wealth than the average start-up founder. Or "how much start-up success is based off luck versus founder?"(from what I've read it's more luck, and if you include the birth luck such as intelligence, energy-levels, focus and health it would…

I made a lot more money at Google than from various startups I've worked at or founded. I made a lot more money from equity I got while working at Google than I did in salary. The ratio when I started working at Google was about 3:1:2 salary:bonus:equity; the ratio as it stands 10 years later, after a 7:1 appreciation in the stock price, was about 3:1:20. This is not inconsistent with "equity is a better way to get r…

This is the exception though, you caught the end of the tail. People joining Google now are not going to experience this. Moreover to be in the situation you described even in the given time frame one had to be fortunate to be on the "right" projects.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#82

Post by PopeDotNinja »

gnicholas wrote: post #80
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points. In this case, I was attempting to refer to he's concerned he'll get hacked, or a trusted associate w/ access to the money would run off with it.

Did your friend come up with any solutions to the trusted associate issue? Seems like there are two obvious approaches: the carrot (pay your employees well above market rates) or the stick (a literal stick, in the extreme) to encourage loyalty. But there are presumably other ways to engineer your account permissions so that one or two rogue associates cannot clean you out?

It's kind of like buying a safe. You can always improve the quality of the safe, but you can't always trust the safe is 100% foolproof. The more you have in the safe, the more you worry there's that one thing you didn't think about that prevents someone from walking away with all the money.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#83

Post by imgabe »

fzeroracer wrote: post #67

This article honestly read like something out of a bullshit self-help book. There's a lot of tidbits in there that sort of ignore the reality for most people and how one small injury, accident etc can spiral out of control and bankrupt someone, at least in America. But reading this part especially stood out to me > We all know people who are consistently pessimistic, who will shoot down everything. Everyone in their…

No, we really don't need any more pessimists. That just results in nothing ever getting done.

It's easy to sit around and come up with hypothetical problems about anything. They may or may not become realities. We'll never know until we try something.

The right course is not to try and fix every possible conceivable problem before starting. This is impossible because there are infinitely many. The right thing is to start, do something, see what actually breaks, and then fix that.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#84

Post by GuiA »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #82
gnicholas wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your friend come up with any solutions to the trusted associate issue? Seems like there are two obvious approaches: the carrot (pay your employees well above market rates) or the stick (a literal stick, in the extreme) to encourage loyalty. But there are presumably other ways to engineer your account permissions so that one or two rogue associates cannot clean you out?

It's kind of like buying a safe. You can always improve the quality of the safe, but you can't always trust the safe is 100% foolproof. The more you have in the safe, the more you worry there's that one thing you didn't think about that prevents someone from walking away with all the money.

You can put your things in many smaller safes, and spread them around a bit!

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#85

Post by tomhoward »

opportune wrote: post #75
tomhoward wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And both are effectively impossible for many people in the world. His advice is meant to be applicable for people who aren't lucky enough to have either of those options. The option to invest in income-generating assets over costly status-signalling devices is available to far more people in the world. E.g. https://www.kiva.org/about/impact/success-stories

One (starting a successful large software business) is still much harder than the other (getting an offer at google, which people like me have got). It's a matter of order of magnitudes of difference

Sure, that may well be true for you, because you're lucky enough to have at least one of those options.

It remains the case that both options are largely/completely out of reach for many/most people in the world.

Naval's advice is applicable for many more people in the world than the few who are lucky enough to be able to get a job at Google or start a successful large software business.

That's the whole point of his list of recommendations.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#86

Post by godzilla82 »

b1daly wrote: post #63

I agree with a lot of his points, and I would do well to embrace them. When he gets into diving people into “makers or takers” that’s an arrogant and ugly way to look at the world. Because “taker” has a perjorative element. People are not one thing. Maybe I’m biased by living in the US but most people I know try to be a positive member of society, even if they lack wealth. Perhaps you could apply the “taker” label to…

Maybe you missed the part where he defines takers. Here's the part :

>Then there are people who come along with a sword, or a gun, or taxes, or crony capitalism, or Communism, or what have you. There’s all these different methods to steal.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#87

Post by godzilla82 »

nostrademons wrote: post #68
b1daly wrote: post #63

I agree with a lot of his points, and I would do well to embrace them. When he gets into diving people into “makers or takers” that’s an arrogant and ugly way to look at the world. Because “taker” has a perjorative element. People are not one thing. Maybe I’m biased by living in the US but most people I know try to be a positive member of society, even if they lack wealth. Perhaps you could apply the “taker” label to…

"Maker" and "taker" are also technical terms from trading markets. The "maker" is the firm who puts a limit order into the order book and waits for someone to accept the trade; the "taker" is the firm who enters a market order (or a limit order that'll fill immediately) and accepts whatever the best bid is in the market. Not sure if he meant it like that, since the following paragraph seem to go on to say that yes, h…

He does define takers in the very next paragraph.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#88

Post by wwweston »

b1daly wrote: post #63

I agree with a lot of his points, and I would do well to embrace them. When he gets into diving people into “makers or takers” that’s an arrogant and ugly way to look at the world. Because “taker” has a perjorative element. People are not one thing. Maybe I’m biased by living in the US but most people I know try to be a positive member of society, even if they lack wealth. Perhaps you could apply the “taker” label to…

> When he gets into diving people into “makers or takers” that’s an arrogant and ugly way to look at the world.

Indeed. It's almost like a status game.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#89

Post by reducesuffering »

"I started as a poor kid in India, so if I can make it, anybody can, in that sense."

I agree with most of the advice and Naval's musing. But let's not pretend opportunity is mostly equal. He attended Stuyvesant [0], one of the highest acclaimed high school educations [1][2]. I'm sure that had a bit to do with how the rest panned out compared to just anyone.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AngelList [1] https://www.niche.com/k12/stuyvesant-high-school-new-york-ny... [1] https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Stuyvesant_High_School/

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

#90

Post by wwweston »

fzeroracer wrote: post #67

This article honestly read like something out of a bullshit self-help book. There's a lot of tidbits in there that sort of ignore the reality for most people and how one small injury, accident etc can spiral out of control and bankrupt someone, at least in America. But reading this part especially stood out to me > We all know people who are consistently pessimistic, who will shoot down everything. Everyone in their…

> This article honestly read like something out of a bullshit self-help book.

There's a reason for that. That reason isn't that what he's telling you is largely bullshit, because much of it is true enough to be useful at a first approximation (although one could argue that some points aren't a fully articulated picture of reality -- in particular I'd assert he's mixed the concerns of status and values and that's going to make certain muddled conclusions easier).

It's that part of what he's doing here is in fact playing a version of the status games he defines, partly on a direct level (wealth creators are high status on by a certain measure of values, critics are just downers for competing values into the ring), partly on a meta level as the narrator who is telling this revealing story to an eager audience who, if they take this advice, will also almost certainly be successful because THIS is the mindset of SUCCESS and of course there is no survivorship bias.

It's pretty standard if quality work in that respect, which is why it has a ring of aspirational self-help.

One good response is to learn from what he's doing as well as carefully weighing the merits and limits of what he's directly saying.

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