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How People Get Rich Now

paulgraham.com

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Re: How People Get Rich Now

#721

Post by pm90 »

ritchiea wrote: post #688
darkwater wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So yeah, rich guy writes a blog article saying essentially "people should just do what I did" and water is wet. I think it's even better. Rich guy that became reach by funding tech startups says: "wanna become a billionaire? The easiest way nowadays is funding a tech company! I can help!"

I am a bit of a PG critic myself at times but he became rich from selling his own startup. He became richer by starting YC but he didn't need to start YC. Based on his essays he basically had enough money to be set for life from selling Viaweb and when he started YC he was looking for something to do next other than just retire.

He didn’t become famous until YC.

I’m also annoyed when people make the argument that goes: “person X became rich from A he didn’t need to do B”. Maslows hierarchy holds true for all of us. Once he got wealth he desired influence (and power).

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#722

Post by refenestrator »

WalterBright wrote: post #655
refenestrator wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense as a post-exceptional-transformation windfall. Not as standard comp for keeping the seat warm while saying "yeah do more of that thing that prints money".

Why would any company hire a CEO and pay him millions to warm a seat? Why would the stockholders put up with that?

I don't know, but half of them are below average by definition.

Take a scan down the Fortune 500 and put a star next to each one you think has had 'exemplary leadership' rather than 'competent administration' or 're-arranging deck chairs while the titanic burns'.

The CEO of eBay got busted sending bloody pig masks to people who left bad reviews on the internet, for god's sake. These people aren't a higher plane of being.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#723

Post by Applejinx »

crispyambulance wrote: post #614
dcolkitt wrote: post #73

> It's easier now to start and grow a company than it has ever been. That means more people start them, that those who do get better terms from investors, and that the resulting companies become more valuable. This may be a quibble, because I think Paul Graham really means a certain type of high-growth startup in mind when he says "start a company". But the rate of new business formation in the US has fallen off a cl…

When Paul Graham says "get rich" it goes without saying that he means "billionaire rich" by virtue of being a founder of a unicorn that goes IPO. That's nice for those that can do it but it's such a tiny number of people, it's irrelevant and non-actionable advice for practically everyone. Right off the bat, he's talking about the "100 Richest". What about people that run a business and make a good living and some pro…

Paul Graham's world doesn't include those. They are doing it wrong by his rules.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#724

Post by Florin_Andrei »

missedthecue wrote: post #588
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR: CEOs are wildly better paid nowadays, compared to decades ago, via mechanism X, as opposed to mechanism Y. Both X and Y ultimately deliver money.

And the question is whether that's a problem or not, and if so, who is it a problem for. My comment illustrates that modern CEO pay does not hurt the average employee in any way, only the shareholders. Either you don't think modern CEO pay is a problem, or you think it's a problem because it makes shareholders poorer. It doesn't impact the rest of the employees or reduce their incomes.

> Either you don't think modern CEO pay is a problem, or you think it's a problem because it makes shareholders poorer.

The fact that you appear to be completely blind to the third option - the actual issue - is far more telling than any argument you've made so far.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#725

Post by thegrimmest »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #562
thegrimmest wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stability or utility of knowing that your children will most likely have a better future than you did Depends on how you qualify "better". By the listed measures, this is still the case. By available land/population this is clearly not. Do we have any reason to believe our children will not have better healthcare, nutrition, access to information, etc than we do? If we don't, then what justification is there for ag…

>By the listed measures, this is still the case. What measures? The ones in your original comment? >healthcare, education, sanitation, nutrition, shelter, comfort, convenience, etc. In the US, you can trace all of these back to wages, especially since healthcare is tied to your employer in the US, and you can look up any a variety of data to show that wages stagnated decades ago, length of tenure at employers decreas…

> In the US, you can trace all of these back to wages

This seems to disregard the trememdous advances in all the fields of healthcare made in the last 40 years. Treatments are readily available for diseases which were previously death sentences. Treatments that were prohibitively expensive in 1980 are cheaply available today. Once we factor this into our analysis I don't think anything has stagnated.

> whose kids' only hope is to use college to boost themselves into an in demand career

What about trade school? There's a shortage of construction labour and skilled trades throught the country.

> have to sink a significant amount of money into their land purchase (house) to establish themselves, away from the rest of their family

I don't recally anyone being forced to buy houses. Plenty of folks raise families in apartments. I myself was raised in one. Yes when you live in a metropolis you can't afford as much space. And?

> and now the number of people that are coupled up is around half in my family and friends, and those with kids by mid 30s is even lower, maybe a third.

And how much of this would you attribute to people making different choices and having different priorities? How would you control for people's willingness to be poorer and still have children?

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#726

Post by aerosmile »

davesque wrote: post #309
dcolkitt wrote: post #73

> It's easier now to start and grow a company than it has ever been. That means more people start them, that those who do get better terms from investors, and that the resulting companies become more valuable. This may be a quibble, because I think Paul Graham really means a certain type of high-growth startup in mind when he says "start a company". But the rate of new business formation in the US has fallen off a cl…

Actually, I think this is almost the perfect response to his article. It's not hard to imagine that a guy who made his fortune off of startups would be biased to think that everyone should create a startup and get rich that way. So, after correcting for rich guy tunnel vision, the statement "more people are starting companies" translates to "more people are starting technology companies in Silicon Valley." And of cou…

> So yeah, rich guy writes a blog article saying essentially "people should just do what I did" and water is wet.

Are you actually seriously complaining about the argument that you'd be better off starting a tech company than a non-tech company? I didn't realize that was even up for debate. Sure, that's how PG made his money, but that doesn't make his argument any less accurate. Just because there's a concept of a success bias, it doesn't automatically apply to every argument.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#727

Post by TapWaterBandit »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #564
davesque wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think this is almost the perfect response to his article. It's not hard to imagine that a guy who made his fortune off of startups would be biased to think that everyone should create a startup and get rich that way. So, after correcting for rich guy tunnel vision, the statement "more people are starting companies" translates to "more people are starting technology companies in Silicon Valley." And of cou…

Agreed. Maybe unpopular opinion, but entrepreneur insights from CEOs are rarely valuable because no individual contribution outweighs sheer luck. Every day millions of people make smart decisions, take good risks, and work hard without significantly improving their conditions. It is pure survivorship bias to think individuals are capable of more than slightly nudging the cosmic needle if it happens to land near the r…

> It makes people uncomfortable to think that success is mostly a matter of luck.

I constantly hear this sentiment and don't think it makes people uncomfortable at all. If anything it is the opposite, people cling to this idea to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own situation.

What makes people far more uncomfortable is the nagging feeling that success isn't mostly a matter of luck. Success is a choice in life that requires restraint, sacrifice, an appetite for risk, and resilience.

But if you follow some basic rules (finish high school, don't have kids before marriage, don't do drugs or smoke, minimise alcohol, eat healthy and exercise, don't buy things to impress others), you have a very good chance of being successful in life. Obviously we can't all be billionaires or whatever, but you can definitely live a fairly comfortable and modest life.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#728

Post by maerF0x0 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #73

> It's easier now to start and grow a company than it has ever been. That means more people start them, that those who do get better terms from investors, and that the resulting companies become more valuable. This may be a quibble, because I think Paul Graham really means a certain type of high-growth startup in mind when he says "start a company". But the rate of new business formation in the US has fallen off a cl…

> Nobody becomes a billionaire from starting a landscaping service or an auto body shop.

few, but actually it's quite reasonable to expect to become a millionaire as show in [1], given the age of the book I'd extrapolate to multimillionaire

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/998.The_Millionaire_Next...

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#729

Post by maerF0x0 »

extra88 wrote: post #694
ikeboy wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The companies are much bigger today. If you run a company that's 10 times as big, why is it surprising that you're getting 10 times the compensation? You'd need to compare to similarly sized companies today. Instead, they look at the top 350 companies now and then.

The workers that produce 10 times as much today (because of newer technologies, techniques, etc.) don't get paid 10 times as much. Worker productivity has continued to climb, decade after decade, but inflation-adjusted worker pay is basically flat over the same time period.

but there is just 1 CEO. A 10x sized company has 10x the resources across the board. But it doesn't have 10x _per employee_. That's why the top of the pyramid scales away from the bottom ...

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#730

Post by greedo »

WalterBright wrote: post #655
refenestrator wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense as a post-exceptional-transformation windfall. Not as standard comp for keeping the seat warm while saying "yeah do more of that thing that prints money".

Why would any company hire a CEO and pay him millions to warm a seat? Why would the stockholders put up with that?

Tim Cook.

Compared to Steve Jobs, Cook is milquetoast. He's fantastic at supply chain management, and milking existing products/services. He's exactly what stockholders have wanted for a CEO after the Jobs died. Someone to basically do the same thing for decades. Milk the iPhone for all it's worth.

Yes, I know he's introduce the Watch and AirPods. But he also introduced the HomePod. He's no tech visionary, and eventually his value will drop and Apple will need a new leader. But for now, he's warming the seat.

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