He didn't say it was over rated per se, he said not to start in business with being a billionaire as your goal. If you create a great product, and a sustainable company the money will follow. There are few things that are consistent across the scores of biographies I've read, but that's one. Create value. The money will follow.
Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
81–90 of 131 posts
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#82Ben Elton explained the diminishing marginal utility of wealth in his book Stark in this fashion: "A man only has one stomach and one dick".
At the risk of overextending the idea (and definitely tongue in cheek), most everyone has two eyes and four limbs -- more money buys better-looking TVs and interior design for those eyes, and lots of fun activities for all those limbs, like really big yachts and private lakes.
I bought a new TV a couple of years ago and was most disapointed to see the same old garbage spewing out of it.
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally - the startup scene now seems to be trending more Hollywood than real meaning. There's so much awesome talent going to optimizing coupons, and not to improving the human condition.
But would they even be in the startup scene if it weren't for the profits? The chance at being the next x or y and making enough money to retire in luxury before the age of 30 is a nontrivial motivator when considering creating a startup. Looking at certain startups it's patently obvious that helping humanity was not a primary concern.
> it's patently obvious that helping humanity was not a primary concern.
But that's exactly what your parent is criticizing. There are genius people in the startup scene whose talents would be better applied to solve problems that actually matter, and not "optimize coupons".
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#84Billionaire-scale conspicuous consumption is certainly overrated. But Gates's own example shows how wonderfully useful and fulfilling it can be to have tens of billions of dollars to mobilize in a really heroic cause, like working to eradicate various infectious diseases from the human experience. Just to get started, as long as we don't have clean water, plenty of food, proper healthcare, good education, meaningful…
The trouble is no amount of finance will cure mismanagement. Throwing money at something is not necessarily the best solution. There are problems that money cannot solve, and it is often these problems that we need solved, if we are to tackle the major challenges.
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#85This was an important thing for me to read. For the past several years I have been trying hard to deprogram myself of the "richer is better" mindset. Part of my problem has been the assumption that richer people believe themselves to be better than those less rich, to the point that someone like Bill Gates would think less of someone who "only" had a couple million dollars. I'm slowly weaning myself off of this damag…
If you make a billion dollars in a free market economy, you have also created a billion dollars in value for others.
No.
If you make $1B in a free market economy, you have also provided (at least) $1B in value to others. You need not have created it: you might simply have arranged for them to have it rather than other people.
An obvious example would be an extraordinarily effective thief, but one needn't be so blatant. For instance, the main effect of a successful investment advisor's work may be to transfer money from people who haven't taken her advice to people who have. (There may be some benefit to the -- presumably better-than-average -- companies she suggests investing in, but there's no reason why that should be large.)
I think one grievance of the OWS protestors is, roughly, that many of the richest people have got that way simply by arranging for their clients to have money at others' expense, rather than by creating value. Though they probably mostly wouldn't put it that way.
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#86The 1% are on display! Thanks for your opinion, Mr. 1%.
He can fix this easily: give his money away. Problem solved.
What a troll Mr. Gates!
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it increasingly bizarre, day by day, that people are so fixated on money and not value, or meaningfulness. There's something about the way that money is discussed on HN that I find odd, but I haven't quite put my finger on it yet. Maybe it's that there can sometimes feel like a larger emphasis on politics or money than the things people have actually created... maybe. I'm not sure. I'm still working on figurin…
There is a small but vocal subset of people on HN who find it hard to believe anyone cares about anything besides money. I think some people just want a simple way of deciding how good they are doing at life.
Jack Welch said something like "I don't care about money, I care about winning. Money is just a way of keeping score."
Indeed, in the game of business, it does seem the most appropriate way to keep score. That doesn't mean business is the only game in town.
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Gates's own example shows how wonderfully useful and fulfilling it can be to have tens of billions of dollars to mobilize in a really heroic cause, like working to eradicate various infectious diseases from the human experience. Maybe. But it doesn't particularly make me want to be a billionaire. If the main satisfaction you get out of having $100 billion dollars is giving it all away again, I'd rather let someon…
The point of making the billion dollars yourself is having a say in where it gets spent, not in "giving it all away" indiscriminately. Indeed, someone else might choose to just keep their billions in the family, for the sake of obnoxious levels of luxury. I'm sure there are some billionaires exactly like that. Anyways, the whole problem with trying to become a billionaire is that it's really a lottery. Sure, someone…
> The point of making the billion dollars yourself is having a say in where it gets spent
I doubt people that are great at creating value would appreciate making these kind of decisions once they get to know what's involved.
Just to give an example: an 8 year-old requested $50'000 from Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to help him survive by contributing to his leukemia treatment, but Gates turned the request down because they don't contribute to individual cases (their policy is to fund programs designed to target large groups of people, i.e. population control in Asia).
I don't imagine great founders or great engineers getting up in the morning because they dream in having a "point" to say in this kind of decisions. They love to do what they do best: creating something people want.
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#89Maybe it's because I didn't read the transcript of the talk, but it sounded like someone tried to ask him his opinion of money in politics and about money being able to buy influence and power, and unfortunately it looked like he failed to address that. If that's the case, that was a very disappointing missed opportunity by him I think.
Re: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated
#90I thought those "notes" were really poorly transcribed. Did the author really not have time to turn them into sentences? "Personally like to thank you for saving me winter algebra last year through Khan Academy investment." "Africa, 800m today will be bigger than China or India, 20M in 2040. In terms of stability, education." "Politics and role of web?" "Student question on negative impact of technology." I understan…
They probably had something else to do in that next hour. Lots of events like this go completely unreported precisely because the notetaker doesn't want to publish them until they get around to going through and tidying them up, which, of course, then never happens. Generally I'm happier with rough notes like this than if they don't get published at all.