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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#111

Post by brianwawok »

ahartmetz wrote: post #41
haritha-j wrote: post #9

I enjoyed this, but the thesis is misleading. Paul’s own examples here were Facebook, apple etc. I imagine that the politicians point was that beyond a certain point, you do have to be unethical to continue that growth rate. Facebook is notorious for doing plenty of this. Apple too is known for exploiting developers. If we extrapolate to trillionaires, we know for a fact that you need to be an all-around dousche that…

Yup. Billionaire - doable without too much ethical compromise (e.g early Google). The thing is that a billion isn't much per "first world" citizen if that is roughly your market. Many-many-billionaire - would need some good example, I can only think of bad ones. The SAP guys maybe? But they aren't exactly the richest. The only bad things I've heard about SAP are "making clunky software" and "charging too much money".

The first billionaire I followed was gates. He did pretty horrible rent extraction to businesses all over the world. See monopoly trials and other similar things that didn’t go to trial.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#112

Post by latexr »

Regarding the scale of what a billion dollars even means, I've recently been thinking of an example which I think might work (but I haven’t tried it on many people yet).

There are 86,400 seconds in a day (24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds = 86400). Now let’s say you spend an average of 1$ every second. That’s every second, including when you’re sleeping or on the toilet. That’s 86,400$ per day, which I hope we can all agree is a lot of money.

If you had one million dollars, to spend it all it’d take you over 11 days (1,000,000 dollars / 86,400 seconds = 11.57).

If you had one billion dollars, to spend it all it’d take you over 31 years (1,000,000,000 dollars / 86,400 seconds / 365 days = 31.71). That is an obscene amount of money.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#113

Post by jLaForest »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #107
ceejayoz wrote: post #95

> So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible. "Earning a billion", to the skating coach, is like pulling off a dodeca-axel. It's not gonna happen through mere pluck, and it's probably g…

You’re suggesting that selling others’ talent isn’t legitimate “earning”? Why?

Selling others labor isn't legitimate earning when you get a higher share of the labors value than the laborer themselves.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#114

Post by jdw64 »

Reading this, I realize that I don't have confidence in winning under capitalism, so I think it would be quicker to just try to break the game of capitalism altogether. But communism, in my opinion, seems like a concept that is unlikely to arrive, so please wait just a little while until I come up with a new ideology.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#115

Post by ceejayoz »

ralfd wrote: post #106
ceejayoz wrote: post #95

> So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible. "Earning a billion", to the skating coach, is like pulling off a dodeca-axel. It's not gonna happen through mere pluck, and it's probably g…

Paul Graham is the skating coach himself, as from 6000 startups financed by y combinator quite a few were unicorns. it is olympian level, but it there is a system to it.

I'm well aware of who pg is.

I'm suggesting - and I think the politician was also clearly suggesting - that a certain point of scale it ceases to really be "earning" anymore.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#116

Post by TrackerFF »

I think the distinction the politician tried to make, was that you don't "earn" a billion dollars the same way the vast majority of people make their money. You become a billionaire by company ownership, not getting cold hard cash.

The hierarchy of wage looks something like:

1. hourly pay (how many hours you can work sets the maximum possible salary)

2. base pay + cash bonus (the cash bonus starts to increase your earning potential. Sometimes the bonus can be huge, for traders, salespeople, etc.)

3. base pay + stock options (the stock options can outsize your base pay by big margins)

4. stock ownership (almost all your wealth is tied up to the stocks)

The vast, vast majority of people are stuck at (1), and will never move to (2). Nearly all billionaires are at (4).

The average worker will work around 100k hours in their lifetime. If you started working today, with a 2% inflation rate, you'd have to start getting paid close to $6000 / hour in order to reach a billion dollars (pre-tax) in total income by the time you retire 50 years from now.

Another factor to consider, is that salaried workers can't use leverage to increase their earnings. A startup founder can find investors and raise money, which works as rocket-fuel for their company. You can practically outspend your competition. That is simply not possible for regular workers, without breaking rules (as in outsourcing your job, taking on several jobs and outsourcing those, while collecting).

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#117

Post by OtherShrezzing »

I don't think this article properly engaged with the criticism from the politician. That's fine, I wasn't expecting it to, but this isn't valuable commentary on the politician's point. I suppose it does serve to demonstrate that Graham and people in Graham's orbit are unable to see a distinction between "have a billion dollars" and "earn a billion dollars".

It's a very sf-bubble type article.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#118

Post by joefourier »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #83
atmavatar wrote: post #74

This article reads like a rather flippant dismissal of the original concern that "earning" a billion dollars cannot be done without some moral compromise. Sure, if you start off with $2 million and double it 9 times, you end up with $1 billion. Exponential growth is a powerful thing, so it comes as no surprise that maintaining a large growth rate over time very quickly grows a starting sum into a much larger pool of…

> Sure, if you start off with $2 million and double it 9 times, you end up with $1 billion. Exponential growth is a powerful thing, so it comes as no surprise that maintaining a large growth rate over time very quickly grows a starting sum into a much larger pool of money. Reminds me of this post I’ve seen making the rounds recently about a welder at SpaceX who was making $28/hr becoming a millionaire. They keep emph…

> My response is “great! Let businesses take a lesson here: give all your employees a chunk of the company. Let’s all share in the success!”

Don't >95% of tech companies offer stock options or equity, from startups to FAANG?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#119

Post by hmokiguess »

I know an easier 3 step hack if anyone's looking for one:

Step 1 ensure server connection is alive and you see pre-birth screen

Step 2 pick character starter pack of higher surface luck areas (e.g. father runs emerald mine in south africa)

Step 3 identify server grandmasters and rewrite unfavorable rules after birth

Unfortunately I skipped step 1 on this build so I'm looking to improve next time!

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#120

Post by miyoji »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #107
ceejayoz wrote: post #95

> So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible. "Earning a billion", to the skating coach, is like pulling off a dodeca-axel. It's not gonna happen through mere pluck, and it's probably g…

You’re suggesting that selling others’ talent isn’t legitimate “earning”? Why?

Because it's not your labor to sell and if you take part of the proceeds for yourself, that's theft.
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