If that is the price the world has to pay for the occasional google so be it.
Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
111–120 of 121 posts
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hacker News is one of the few forums where being able to lock in a six-figure salary (100k USD) for 60 years isn't viewed as being set for life. The wonders of entrepreneurship and the cost of living in the Bay Area.
None of us want to work for 60 years, particularly not for someone else. Also, our Bay Area apartments cost $2M.
The parent comment is pointing out that a $6M payout is equivalent to 60 years of 100k salary, for no further work.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would think the tax rate would be lower, considering that a sale of shares is treated as capital gains. 15%?
true. but that's only for long term. i have no idea what short term tax is, but i know it's also less than 30%. i was trying to overestimate taxes (so that the reported annual income, if anything, would be less than actual annual income) and use a nice round number so i didn't have to use a calculator.
Long-term is holding the asset for a year or more. Short-term is treated as ordinary income.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right now 10-year T-Bills are pulling about 1.65, and inflation is having a nice bounce between 1.7 and 3. Let's even it out at 2 - either way, yes, you're losing money on ultra-low-risk investments. All you can hope for is to reduce the wages of inflation on your balance sheet. BH annuity is not a bad deal, but losing 2% of your income a year will sound tolerable until about year 5... =) If you retire mid-twenties o…
You want to spend 50 years on vacation?
I said nothing of the sort.
Follow the thread UP, and you'll see it's the core of the conversation - as to whether one can live off of 6MM for the rest of your life. I call "ceasing working and living on the money you made previously" retirement, you can call it what you like.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#115Anybody have any firsthand knowledge on how prevalent things like this happen? Seeing as how his company was acquired by LinkedIn, is he admitting this was his strategy?
You think he started a search as a service company because he was targeting LinkedIn?
Flaptor (the name of the company, IndexTank was the product) was a search consulting company five years before becoming a startup. I know, I was there.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#116Is this the real story (and motivation) behind IndexTank?
Even if it is inspired on IndexTank the difference is that IndexTank was a very valuable service and ended being an open source project. We can think of IndexTank as a kickstarter project now!
Also Flaptor was a search consulting company five years before the startup.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where do you live? This is HUGELY dependent on geography. $18k a month in NYC, Seattle, SF, etc., is pretty painful. Add two kids, private school (unless you live in a great district), college educations, saving for retirement, summer camp, braces, health care for 4, housing for 4 in a good neighborhood, helping out your retired parents who might not have saved enough, etc., it stacks up pretty fast.
$18k/yr in NYC or SFBA with a mortgage and a family is untenable. $18k/yr in most major US cities probably implies: * Subsistence diet * Dependence on small selection of rental properties * Extremely poor access to health care * Dependence on informal "gratis" child care * Near perfect job attendance I call these out not to make the boring "gnash our teeth about the lives of the poor" case, but rather the suggest tha…
Well my point is not that everyone should be able to live off $18k a year. My point is that You don't need $500k a year to live decently. I have a new car, a good apartment and amenities such as cable TV and xbox live. Certainly geography plays a large role in individual costs. But again, I'm not trying to say everyone should live on $18k a year. I'm saying I (a single fellow btw) do, and it's a satisfactory lifestyle complete with all the necessities and a few luxuries.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
true. but that's only for long term. i have no idea what short term tax is, but i know it's also less than 30%. i was trying to overestimate taxes (so that the reported annual income, if anything, would be less than actual annual income) and use a nice round number so i didn't have to use a calculator.
Long-term is holding the asset for a year or more. Short-term is treated as ordinary income.
true, but what's the interest rate for short term cap gains?
i know it's (15,30), but i can't rememeber if it's just 18% or something more like 25%. and since i am efficient (read: lazy :), i just overestimated to 30% instead of wikipedia-ing.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
From Google: dif·fi·cult/ˈdifiˌkəlt/ Adjective: 1. Needing much effort or skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand. 2. Characterized by or causing hardships or problems. I don't see lack of spaceships causing hardship, so that's really more of a definition #1 type of thing. Society built spaceships in the 60's, contrast that against the effectiveness of a spam filtering system built with hardware, software, algo…
OK how about I rephrase: I meant "OMG-big-deal-game-changing problems." Difficult is just a proxy for that. To Stephensons point, which he makes in the video in the link, he really means dreaming up and solving big problems. The example he gave was building the worlds tallest building. I'm paraphrasing him here: Typically accomplishing the goal of building the worlds tallest building is measured only in contrast to t…
How would you get in and out of the upper (or even middle) floors of a 3000 story building? Atmospherics would be a serious concern at 10 miles up. Sounds like the kind of project the North Koreans would start and then abandon when they ran out of money.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zero risk return is way below 6% right now. I'm not sure where you're going to find anything like that. Berkshire Hathaway is willing to guarantee you a $205,000 annual income from that sum in an annuity, which is not a bad deal at all, but it's not 'never worry about money again', it's just a really nice salary, and would be substantially depleted in the case of any inflation at all.
If a guaranteed six-figure passive income is not "never worry about money again", I don't know what is.
Suppose someone said that to you in 1975, and you'd put your money into something that didn't adjust for inflation.
You'd be 37 years older and making less than 1/4 of the income, adjusted for inflation.