Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#451

Post by clear-octopus »

sofard wrote: post #181
AdamN wrote: post #124

She meant impossible in that one doesn't earn a billion dollars through work alone. The only way to get there is to set up a structure that extracts a billion dollars from a market (usually by building a structure that's more efficient but also generates externalities that are not borne by the person getting the billion dollars). pg's reading of it is so blunt and misrepresentative that I'm nervous about what kind of…

I think there are many arguments against AOC's comments, but I agree that PG here is misrepresenting her point. I don't think anyone reading PG's blog is clueless about the power of compounding or the difference between salary and wealth through asset growth. Her point is essentially whether the entire capital system is "fair." And to be fair to PG I don't think AOC articulated a particularly strong point either.

[dead]

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#452

Post by crispyambulance »

The thing about "compound growth", even in the most general sense, is that it ALWAYS ends, and that end is typically a crash of some sort.

In biology there's the notion of a growth curve. It starts out with the familiar "compound interest" exponential growth, but unlike Econ-101 textbooks, that curve then proceeds to resource depletion (overshoot), followed by "die-off", followed by extinction, where (N -> 0, where N is usually something like yeast-cell count, but if you're applying this model to something else, it could be stuff like well-being or money).

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#453

Post by cco »

sofard wrote: post #181
AdamN wrote: post #124

She meant impossible in that one doesn't earn a billion dollars through work alone. The only way to get there is to set up a structure that extracts a billion dollars from a market (usually by building a structure that's more efficient but also generates externalities that are not borne by the person getting the billion dollars). pg's reading of it is so blunt and misrepresentative that I'm nervous about what kind of…

I think there are many arguments against AOC's comments, but I agree that PG here is misrepresenting her point. I don't think anyone reading PG's blog is clueless about the power of compounding or the difference between salary and wealth through asset growth. Her point is essentially whether the entire capital system is "fair." And to be fair to PG I don't think AOC articulated a particularly strong point either.

I disagree, I think she articulated it very well. At scale you have sound bites, that's it.

She captured the truth, that our current system vastly favors capital over labor (etc etc etc), and did that in around six or seven words.

You can't really do better than that when communicating ideas at scale. What she said is true, it's for essays, economic papers, and laws to provide the nuance.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#454

Post by inigyou »

matwood wrote: post #273
irishcoffee wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say before Uber was a thing, if I tried to call and schedule a taxi pickup in the city I lived in at the time, if they showed up at all they were at east a half hour late. Missed a flight because of it once. I don’t even like uber, but it is objectively a better service most of the time.

Uber also forced taxi services to have apps and always accept CCs.

Competition is good. Which is why having only two taxi apps is bad.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#455

Post by inigyou »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #332
Kuyawa wrote: post #290

We can't romanticize making money, it's a ruthless field where mostly politicians, the military complex, and drug traffickers thrive, and a few startups that cater to the global economy, which are very very rare, so rare than only 30 out of more than 6000 have succeded in Paul's own words. Amazon was first, then Uber went world wide, so did Airbnb, and now OpenClaw, so yes, the AI gold rush opened the gates for new o…

This aren’t great example are they? Amazon is famous for being a terrible company to work for, on the logistics side. Airbnb has caused all sorts of social problems. Uber results in people working for peanuts and has circumvented labour laws. I think there are some startups that have created large scale value without doing something malevolent, but not those ones. Things like Linear. Good tool for software dev, no on…

We're talking about how to get (not earn) a billion dollars so yes, they're good examples of that. It seems like if you break the law and make life worse for everyone, you can get a billion dollars.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#456

Post by photon_lines »

Grombobulous wrote: post #420
theptip wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the point, PG doesn’t actually engage with it. He just says “compound growth + build something that people love”. But the meat of the point is: if the economy is growing at 2.5%, how do you sustain 15% over 5 years? Look, I’m a startup guy, I buy into the premise that it’s an intensely value-creating activity. But I think it’s self-defeating to pretend like the…

There are extremely good arguments for why the act of becoming and remaining a billionaire is immoral and bad alone, without any need for you to have directly wronged someone else. PG just completely misunderstands and hand-waves over this basic concept and makes the excuse that "hey we worked really hard and made an amazing product that people loved, we aren't harming anyone." For one thing, founders and employees d…

I agree with most of what you're saying -- but just wanted to add some notes here: 1) founders should start companies where equity is distributed to the early employees much more evenly: this actually gives additional super-powers to the company since employee incentives are much more closely aligned with the vision of the founders (building something great that people love to use). 2) stop rewarding growth: there is nothing wrong with NOT growing 90% a month. The goal of most companies shouldn't be to grow or return maximum value to investors (or shareholders): it should be to provide a greater human good the markets will be willing to pay for 3) revenue growth also is not something to aim for: sustainable income growth is. 4) unless the billionaires start re-distributing their wealth -- history is not on their side. A revolution will happen: usually this is associated with the younger male population being unemployed (~15% is the magic number) and causing an uprising. The goal of most founders at this point should not be 'how do I get to 1 billion.' The massive unemployment caused by the AI revolution will cause a massive uprising. There is great danger I think if they do not figure out a way to re-distribute their wealth. Currently, the poor and middle class are taxed way more than the rich (as a percentage of their income): and from what I see are increasingly becoming more disgruntled with the situation they are in. Why in the world would anyone want to even be a billionaire in this situation is the question I want to ask?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#457

Post by wtfHN26 »

epsteingpt wrote: post #238

Impressed at the commentary here, which correctly points out Paul dodges the entire issue at hand. Three things can be true: 1. Growing at a rapid rate over long periods of time is hard , doable and rewarding 2. Incentivizing the discovery of these things is good for society. 3. Nonethless there is and should be a limit to wealth acquisition, given moral hazard. To make a similarly glib counterargument to Paul G: If…

> 3. Nonethless there is and should be a limit to wealth acquisition, given moral hazard.

How do we determine that limit ?

Most Americans ( middle class and above ) are richer than most people in the world.

Way richer than most people in Africa or poorer parts of Asia can ever aspire to be.

Consider that when competing for resources these poor people are competing with wealthy middle class Americans.

Add to that the USD being world's reserve currency makes life easy for a small part of global population earning in the USA and makes it harder for people in every other country whose currency might not be competitive compared to the USD.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#458

Post by proee »

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Not all companies are growing because they are making their customers happy. Some are fully exploiting their customer, users, environment, etc.

This mindset is what makes capitalism very ugly, and im not sure how one backs off the throttle a bit to grow responsibly?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#460

Post by derektank »

Grombobulous wrote: post #420
theptip wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the point, PG doesn’t actually engage with it. He just says “compound growth + build something that people love”. But the meat of the point is: if the economy is growing at 2.5%, how do you sustain 15% over 5 years? Look, I’m a startup guy, I buy into the premise that it’s an intensely value-creating activity. But I think it’s self-defeating to pretend like the…

There are extremely good arguments for why the act of becoming and remaining a billionaire is immoral and bad alone, without any need for you to have directly wronged someone else. PG just completely misunderstands and hand-waves over this basic concept and makes the excuse that "hey we worked really hard and made an amazing product that people loved, we aren't harming anyone." For one thing, founders and employees d…

> For one thing, founders and employees don't share equally in the high growth rate of the company even though at most a founder is working let's say 2x longer hours than a salaried employee. You can do nothing wrong but you're still taking more of your fair share by the basic structure of how the business is setup.

What is fair? Obviously hours worked is one metric to determine what is fair. But another way to arrive at what is fair is through negotiation. Neither the founders nor potential hires are obligated to work with one another. The only way it happens is if an early employee believes the compensation they are offered by the founders is fair. If it was unfair, they would presumably reject the offer outright.

Post reply on HN