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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#881

Post by jibal »

jltsiren wrote: post #670
pipes wrote: post #509

The amount of negativity to this is depressing. No one seems to be contradicting anything he's saying here, instead it's just vacuous ideology "extraction" etc etc. Purposely narrow reading. I've got kids, I want people creating start ups they can work in, the alternative is too grim.

The essay kind of misses the point, as the question was mostly about the meaning of word "earned". "Earned income", for tax purposes, matches pretty closely the kinds of income many people consider genuinely earned in the moral sense. From this perspective, if a startup grows organically and the founders become rich, they have earned it. But if the growth requires capital (an investment, a loan, or the wealth the fou…

> The essay kind of misses the point

That's a very charitable way to put it. The reality is Graham blatantly lied about what AOC wrote, and then went on and on addressing the strawman of whether you can accumulate a billion dollars.

> as the question was mostly about the meaning of word "earned".

Exactly. Which makes this entire page absurdly misdirected.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#882

Post by walkerbrown »

zozbot234 wrote: post #36
smallmancontrov wrote: post #3

In creative destruction, you can do an accounting sleight of hand by attributing credit for creation while ignoring blame for destruction even though the two are linked. This is a technology + investing forum and all of us agree that in general creative destruction processes are enormously net positive, but they frequently do kick off a toxic byproduct in the form of said destruction (e.g. Uber and displaced taxi dri…

There's no resource destruction involved in displacing taxi drivers. Taxi medallions are a rent-seeking scheme, there's no real scarcity involved. Most other instances of "creative destruction" are like that, the capital simply gets repurposed at negligible social cost and only excess profits disappear.

Uber misclassifies en masse the drivers it employs and shifts vehicle depreciation costs onto these "small businesses". Our taxes pay for healthcare costs which should rightfully be borne by the drivers' employer. I would say that's a non-negligible social cost.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#883

Post by atq2119 »

usernametaken29 wrote: post #817

I think it’s astounding that the author can’t see that individual goodness or badness doesn’t necessarily mean you will not cause societal harm. He lists AirBnB and Facebook as successful billion dollar companies, in which likely the CEO did not have malicious intentions, but these companies are harming society at humongous scale unlike we have ever seen before (addiction and housing crisis). Given that this post rea…

Agree with most of this except come on. Facebook was born out of a misogynist precursor. The idea that its CEO had no malicious intentions is ridiculous.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#884

Post by atulatul »

justincarter wrote: post #704
hammock wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on HN for 15+ years I have found it fascinating to witness the fawning and adulation over pg blog posts completely reverse and everyone has turned on him now. It used to be if you criticized anything in his blogs you’d get downvoted to oblivion. Now criticism is the norm. As far as I can tell it’s less a change in pg’s viewpoints (though the topics have evolved, and he has gotten more transparent perhaps)…

I still like to read pg but he keeps writing about things outside of his domain. Here for example I trust him to talk about growth rates and how startups work. But I don’t trust him to talk about wealth inequality and how political leaders respond to it.

I also read what he writes. But some other things he writes/ tweets about actually interest me more- like art, writing-as-thinking, some interactions with his kids- than his startup related stuff. Some content seems repetitive or maybe I have moved on- for better or for worse- from such content: people in twenties, money-vs-wealth, airbnb, stripe (Collisons), Jessica, users, unrealistic sounding growth can be real, etc.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#885

Post by a13n »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #637

It's clear to me that in order to get a billion, you have to swidle a lot of people out of their fair share of the billion. As soon as the person that has "The Idea" keeps their 60% stake of the company while the army of minions are working their assess off to get that idea to a billion dollar valuations are given crumbs or no stake at all, you know who is swindling who.

Nobody is forcing people to be employees of startups. They choose to do it of their own free will. If they think they can generate immense value from their own ideas they are free to go try to do that. Hiring people to do a job for a wage they agree to isn’t swindling.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#886

Post by rubenvanwyk »

I literally didn't read any comment that spoke to the context to which PG was speaking - Oxford Union.

Any sane, rational person would offer different advice to people they see as "future prime ministers and billionaires" or at the very least people influential in future policy decisions, than they would to society in general.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#887

Post by callmeal »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #228
holistio wrote: post #87

I've been able to calculate logarithms for well over 20 years. That's not the problem. The problem is even simpler mathematics. Proportions. How much do we give to first employees? How realistic is that John Smith, first salesman of the company is getting 2% and should consider himself lucky, while I, Peter Boss retain most of the company? We always talk about the dilation of the founders' shares and its relation to…

Simply, neoliberal capitalism is sociopathy with quarterly returns. The assumptions are: 1. A uniquely special class of people do all the work that matters. They're astoundingly gifted, talented, and insightful, and have a rare ability to make profits happen by having very special ideas, owning Important Things, and telling everyone else what to do. These prodigies deserve everything. They are not to be criticised or…

I would add another one:

5. The people working some jobs (notably in the service sector and farm labor) are expected to be poor and remain poor.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#888

Post by svnt »

chistev wrote: post #880
tsimionescu wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think no one is contradicting him? The exponential growth model that pg presents is an obvious lie - you could use his exact explanation to claim that good founders will soon become trillionaires, all it takes is 9 months of 93% growth after your first few billions; quadrillionaires will soon follow. The obvious reality is that exponential growth is just a small phase in any company's history, and it is an…

I agree with you, but what would be the argument against Athletes and someone like J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter author)?

Founders are often synonymous with their businesses. In the case of celebrities the relevant exploitation is carried out by others in the value chain, they are just the lure/source.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#889

Post by kraf »

I asked ChatGPT how many billionaires the US can have if every one of them has "just" 1 billion and if everyone else has basically nothing (i.e. zero net worth).

It said that the theoretical maximum is 174,000. In a country of 340 million.

That sounds to me like the chance to make it is a lot lower than 0.05%

Maybe we should just stop pretending that everyone can make it and that it's mostly people who already come about with vast amounts of luck (means = luck, opportunity = luck) who have even a chance to make it.

People with cool startup ideas cannot just make it. Working hard is not enough. Growth is not good enough. They will likely just be destroyed in an increasingly unfair and predatory market.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#890

Post by [deleted] »

chistev wrote: post #880
tsimionescu wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think no one is contradicting him? The exponential growth model that pg presents is an obvious lie - you could use his exact explanation to claim that good founders will soon become trillionaires, all it takes is 9 months of 93% growth after your first few billions; quadrillionaires will soon follow. The obvious reality is that exponential growth is just a small phase in any company's history, and it is an…

I agree with you, but what would be the argument against Athletes and someone like J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter author)?

[deleted]
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