301–310 of 681 posts
> If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies. Actaally if you look at those lists, the largest number made it by choosing their parents correctly.
If I look here, top 20 are 17 founders and 3 heirs (2 Waltons - Walmart, and one Bettencourt - L’Oreal)
One of the reasons is my background, besides ‘building my stuff’ I was very busy fighting the obstacles most of the people in a developed country would never meet. Or most of the people having parents would never meet.
Life got me in the middle of building a very nice thing, giving me obstacles I couldn’t manage. Then, when I was climbing out of it, there was the pandemic, which messed many things in my life.
I just migrated to Ukraine back then, and you all know what happened next, the Russian full-scale invasion. That’s only the public events, I’m ignoring all the personal stuff here.
Saying that, for me, it was about five years, at least, I paused with my projects. Some of them are slightly irrelevant, some are not. There are ones I still believe are very good, even now when I’m older and more experienced. I got a huge load of non-professional experience over these years, and it helps me to understand the world so much better now. Will I ever find my resources for building my ideas? Nobody knows. If I’ll survive the war, I think I will.
During this half a decade I juggled stupid jobs (won’t mention why to save time, personal life events) because for a regular job I’m either too qualified or have a very different experience, non-applicable to local market. And I’m way too expensive when I work as an employee. I’m more the founder / employer type than the employee type, unemployable, as they used to brag in the Valley.
And my point is. I regret I never took my time to explore the professional life I despised all my life. This stupid CV/resume and LinkedIn idiocracy. When I had no resources, I could easily manage any enterprise job. I’m very good at stupid politics if needed, but I don’t enjoy it. And I’m very good with the software tools, so I can do your average enterprise employee workday for a couple of hours time. That proved my previous years as a freelancer, building my company, and interacting with the people I know from the corporate world.
In time of my need, I was just contemplating others earning way too much for their skills. When I didn’t even have a stupid resume, but was usually overqualified for a senior position, not to say a junior one. And no resources to learn the things I missed from this corporate thing.
Now it’s getting better due to my personal life changes, but I just lost some years of professional development. Plus loads of money I could earn on a stupid job (I won’t burn out type, as I don’t give a flying duck type).
While I’m not arguing about the point, especially as a piece of advice for teenagers, I would recommend learning other options, and get as much different life experience as you can, while you’re very young. That experience is much more valuable than all the money you can get. I got loads of money and all of that money is burned by now. I could earn more (loss less) if I would be better prepared for personal stuff in my life. As it took way too much energy and affected my work way too much.
Also, I don’t believe you build Facebook or Google when you are super young. I would say that is more of a luck thing. I believe you build something valuable when you understand what is around you and how the World works. You can build your super project at 50, why not?
And as the P.S. the Zuck story is a pure manipulation. We all know that wasn’t even his idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly a few, but a quick scan of lists makes it look more like 25% inherited in the top 20 or so
I think it depends where you set the limit between “self made” and “inherited”. I don’t think it’s black or white Would Gates have made it if Mum wasn’t on the board of IBM? Would Bezos have made it without 200k from mum&dad ?
“Learn to code and surround yourself with smart people” is good advice, but it’s kind of funny that Google was used as the example of peak success for a group of 15 year olds. I’m fairly willing to bet that most of them think of Google as boring and old, and not exciting or innovative. How to start TikTok or Minecraft would have probably been a more inspiring example.
Folks underestimate how incredibly skilled Notch was and is. Unfortunately ludum dare has taken down its historical compo pages, but I remember that he had several games built from scratch in 24 hours which were mind boggling impressive. One had a full 3d rendering engine implemented in Dartlang written in 48 hours. Another was a minecraft top down rpg clone. Dude is the Bobby Fischer of tech
It's no surprise that almost all of the iconic things about Minecraft was created in the first few years by Notch.... everything else afterwards is just polishing it and adding fluff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess luck plays a big role in one's success. That said, pg's points still hold, as he is telling us how to maximize our chance of success despite of what we are born with.
If the goal is to maximize your chances it would not be to start a company. It would be get a degree from decent school + white collar work for 10-20 years (whilst paying off student loans) + diligently investing in index funds and home ownership. That is how guys are getting rich on Reddit 'FIRE' subs at 30-40-years old, not start-ups.
The blindness to privilege that’s tied up in the part about why you ‘need’ to go to a good (by which he means highly selective) school… > if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are... > The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as…
Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…
I think it probably has a lot to do with the US being the number 1 economy in the world so yes, it does appear to have society-wide benefits. Does it have personal benefits? I think this is probably more controversial. I suspect some people push themselves too hard and would have been happier otherwise, whereas others do indeed benefit from this advice. I suspect that the users of HN probably fall in the latter category.
Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…
> You can't know whether it will turn into a company worth billions or one that goes out of business. So when I say I'm going to tell you how to start Google, I mean I'm going to tell you how to get to the point where you can start a company that has as much chance of being Google as Google had of being Google.
lol why do so many people here have such a loser/average mindset, you can literally achieve anything, literally anything, just because you don’t want to work hard, you don’t gotta be so discouraging to other people, well I guess people who wanna achieve great things probably don’t care about the stupid lazy people, so it’s whatever But the fact is you can literally do anything, you just gotta give it your all…
Pretending like all 8 billion people have the same opportunity to be the next Jeff Bezos/Elon/Jobs is misleading.
My advice for the 99% is to the best you can and foster family and friend relationships, work less, and get out of the mindless consumerist game.
Totally insane. 99% or more of the people who enable Google to do what Google does are employees of Google. Same with every other company. The odds of being the founder of a successful company are probably worse than being a professional sportsball player (if only because they turn over more frequently). Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful…