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Billionaires Build

paulgraham.com

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Re: Billionaires Build

#181

Post by googlryas »

mbgerring wrote: post #165

Ctrl-F “employees” 0 results It’s crazy that so many of these companies with billionaire founders have thousands of employees who are not billionaires, nor have a meaningful stake in the decisions the company makes. Wonder what that’s about.

What's wrong with this? Employees have different risk profiles than founders. Employees can jump from job to job within a few days. The same is not true for founders. Employees paycheck is (basically) guaranteed until the outfit collapses. The same is not true for founders.

If I dump all my time and savings into founding a company and it fails, will my employees bail me out and help me get back on my feet?

Re: Billionaires Build

#182

Post by [deleted] »

Meekro wrote: post #76
Traster wrote: post #28

For a clearly smart guy it's so frustrating to see PG bring in a topic like the Billionaires being exploitative, and then taking such a thoroughly blinkered view. It's a massive blind spot that PG fails to address is that it's the exact same sense of mission that he sees in start ups that creates the permission structure to exploit people. It's not that people set out to exploit people and as a result they become bil…

California legislators made this kind of argument earlier this year as they tried to force Uber to reclassify their drivers as employees. California voters rejected that. Uber drivers themselves overwhelmingly wanted to keep their contractor status. Maybe they don't consider themselves exploited?

[deleted]

Re: Billionaires Build

#183

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

yetanothermonk wrote: post #162
dang wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same way but pg has since changed the title from "What You Can Learn from How to Ace a YC Interview" to "Billionaires Build" so he obviously wants to emphasize that aspect.

Thanks for the heads up. The old title was also clickbaity but this new title is even more so. I wonder if even HN comment reactions are more towards the title vs the content.

I think there's an inevitable framing effect. There are lots of points I'd agree with if presented in isolation, and indeed PG has written solid essays before on the general topic of how destructive it is to say that business owners can only make money by exploiting others. But it's hard to talk about those things when the article explicitly builds towards a thesis that billionaires are great and all good YC founders should want to be one.

Re: Billionaires Build

#184

Post by Threeve303 »

mbgerring wrote: post #165

Ctrl-F “employees” 0 results It’s crazy that so many of these companies with billionaire founders have thousands of employees who are not billionaires, nor have a meaningful stake in the decisions the company makes. Wonder what that’s about.

You have to wonder how the billionaire looks at it though. Of course, they made money because of employees.

Would it be increasingly easy to convince yourself that it was actually all just you? Not the employees, not the hand full of high producing employees, certainly not the infrastructure provided by the government and society that enables wealth collection.

No, it was all the efforts of the Billionaire. I mean, you do have a billion dollars to prove it...

Full disclosure: Not a billionaire

Re: Billionaires Build

#185

Post by yellowapple »

stopachka wrote: post #35
ojnabieoot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big problem here is that the children of a musical prodigy aren’t necessarily musically talented, and the children of amazing athletes aren’t necessarily amazing athletes. But the children of billionaires are (almost) all obscenely wealthy.

I think these are all more similar than you think: Consider - the children of musical prodigies are likely to be more musical then average. The children of billionaires are likely to be more entrepreneurial than average - both are likely to be wealthy - neither are likely to be as prolific — I.e a child making an even more successful business, or being a better musician - over a few generations, both are likely to re…

I mean, just because someone squanders an advantage doesn't mean that one didn't have an advantage to begin with.

And that's the fundamental difference between the child of a musician v. the child of a billionaire. In order for the musicians' child to be a prodigy like one's parent, there's still considerable training and practice required. In order for the billionaire's child to be a billionaire like one's parent, the child simply needs to wait for one's parent to die.

That is: the passing down of musical aptitude through multiple generations requires each generation to put in approximately the same labor as the previous. The passing down of material wealth through multiple generations does not.

The descendants of American billionaires might suck at sustaining their advantageous positions right now, but that's only because America's upper class is relatively fresh, still full of bourgeois "new wealth" instead of aristocratic "old wealth", and lacking practice with migrating from the former to the latter. In a century or two (barring intervention to return wealth to the proletariat) I'd expect the American upper class to get into that groove of wealth consolidation, like how things evolved in Europe (and hell, if the US follows the same trajectory as the Roman Empire we might even end up with the same sort of feudal society in some places).

Re: Billionaires Build

#186

Post by mbgerring »

marcinzm wrote: post #175
mbgerring wrote: post #165

Ctrl-F “employees” 0 results It’s crazy that so many of these companies with billionaire founders have thousands of employees who are not billionaires, nor have a meaningful stake in the decisions the company makes. Wonder what that’s about.

Nothing is stopping those employees from taking all the risks and starting their own businesses. Of course they'll give up their stable consistent paychecks and benefits for possibly years with only a small chance of high returns. Lower risk, lower reward.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that there are plenty of factors preventing some people from taking risks, and insulating and enabling others. You might even find that many of these factors are predictable and systemic!

Re: Billionaires Build

#187

Post by CalChris »

mbgerring wrote: post #165

Ctrl-F “employees” 0 results It’s crazy that so many of these companies with billionaire founders have thousands of employees who are not billionaires, nor have a meaningful stake in the decisions the company makes. Wonder what that’s about.

Ctrl-F "value"

0 results

If billionaires build, they have to build something. That something should have value. Throwing money at creative destruction à la WeWork isn't building value but Adam Neumann sure made out well as did BenchMark.

Re: Billionaires Build

#188

Post by aresant »

I imagine that the mantra "billionaires build" was first seeded in the head of a young, newly rich PG after selling Viaweb.

As PG is likely on the cusp of "billionairehood" this essay follows his typically cathartic & open writing style - one part personal reconciliation, one part insight

After selling viaweb in 1998 PG's options probably looked like ->

-=> Option 1 "Hit the beach"

-=> Option 2 "How far can we take this"

-=> Option 3 "What can we give back"

Very early stage investment is an exercise in patience.

The genesis of YC (after giving a "free" talk at Harvard around startups) says PG first chose to keep going and combined it with a desire to be helpful to other entrepreneurs

YC has had huge wins before, PG is a very wealthy man.

But nothing on the scale of what YC will collect from AirBNB and Stripe in the near future

In 2020 these essays being seasoned with a "billionaire" flavoring is not disconnected from that coming windfall and PG's need to reconcile

I for one am looking forward to watching PG navigate his continued transition

I would be personally surprised if along the way he didn't launch an improved and more actionable "Giving Pledge" like organization for his final act

Re: Billionaires Build

#189

Post by dang »

ardy42 wrote: post #169

> But aptitude for exploiting people is not what Y Combinator looks for at all. In fact, it's the opposite of what they look for. I'll tell you what they do look for, by explaining how to convince Y Combinator to fund you, and you can see for yourself. I mean, of course. Y Combinator is looking first and foremost for people who will make them billions in the aggregate. Most of those people who pass the interview will…

> Y Combinator is looking first and foremost for people who will make them billions in the aggregate

Since the only way this happens is by funding founders who go on to build big successes, you're confirming what pg said.

Re: Billionaires Build

#190

Post by googlryas »

dustingetz wrote: post #124
Emphere wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good, something I have been thinking about as well. Inequality is bad because of the massive power differentials. How do you propose we "solve" that while still being able to reap the benefits of scale? Any pointers or books to read about this topic? Admittedly I haven't looked too hard.

Idea for the solution is to get everyone together to opt-in to a value system that demonizes excess accumulation. That sounds crazy/impossible today, but on lets say, a 2000 year timespan could we get there? 2000 years ago, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was a seminal idea, eventually resulting in the world today where killing is demonized and this is existence proof of a solution. We can then abstract to the general class of…

But things are only valuable because people think they are valuable. It's not clear to me why I should need to change my behavior because other people have changed how they view me or my property.

If I find a special rock in my back yard that someone would pay me $100,000 for - I get to keep all that money in your system I assume. But if I find a special rock in my back yard that someone would pay me $1,000,000,000 for - I don't get to keep the money, or if I want to hold onto the rock, I need to give part of the rock away?

More concretely - imagine if TSLA has crossed the threshold because of the recent rally, where now Elon "should" be forcibly divested of part of his ownership of the company. Let's say he goes from 20% to 5%.

Later, the stock crashes back down below the threshold. Does Elon get his 15% back?

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