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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#941

Post by nullocator »

WalterBright wrote: post #588
blfr wrote: post #23

But the accounting difference is real. It is virtually impossible to earn a billion dollars. What is possible but still difficult is to create something worth a billion dollars which you can then sell if you choose so. And to the people criticizing, this is cheating. To them, a billion dollars enterprise is not possible without the exploitation of employees, customers, or at least the environment. Also, the most impo…

Musk minted 4,000 millionaires last friday.

How many paupers did he create? I haven't seen this reported on, seems biased to ignore it.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#942

Post by ookblah »

you can also yolo on 0 dte options like 10 times in a row and become one too lol. i fail to see his point in that calculation, he takes an obvious truth, which is sustained growth rate = billionaire and nothing evil about that, but then mixes it in with the fact that 99% of companies stall out and then you have to play politics and extraction to get yourself over the hump. show me a company does that without compromising deals and making deals w/ the devil, etc.

the "hard" part isn't sustaining 15% growth over years, it's doing that in a way that is as reductive as he tries to make it "just build something people like!" and not having VCs and other bullshit trying to backstab and force you into making questionable decisions.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#943

Post by seventytwo »

hammock wrote: post #690
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.

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)…

Bound to happen in a society that’s been increasingly warped and purchased by people like PG in the last 15 years

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#944

Post by mrhottakes »

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.

Well, you can't always get what you want.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#945

Post by ripe »

pdonis wrote: post #740
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have liked the essay more if PG had actually engaged with AOC's claims. He just does some math and shows that exponential growth is fast. What did the founder have to do to keep growing at 93%? Good solid business fundamentals and identifying a new solution can get you some growth. But eventually you've done all that and the only way to continue growing is extraction -- buy out your competition and raise marg…

> I would have liked the essay more if PG had actually engaged with AOC's claims. I don't see why he should have engaged with them any more than he did, because AOC's claims are BS. He gave them more attention than they deserve. What he should have engaged with is, what happens when a startup stops being a startup ? All three of his poster children for startups, Apple, Google, and Facebook, are now notorious for trea…

On the one hand, you say AOC's claims are BS. And then you say that Facebook is:

> making money in ways that at least a substantial number of people don't think are "earning" money, such as monetizing users' data.

Is this not a contradiction? Or are you splitting hairs between a "true startup" and an enshittified bigCo?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#946

Post by igravious »

igravious wrote: post #935
wcfrobert wrote: post #411

I read pg's collection of essays (Hackers and Painters) in my 20s, and it single-handedly prevented me from being radicalized by leftist ideologies. The one insight from the book that I will always remember from the book is this: if you want to be rich, make something people want. Money is fiat to the value you've generated in growing the economic pie. It is in fact possible gain wealth ethically. However, there are…

> I read pg's collection of essays (Hackers and Painters) in my 20s, and it single-handedly prevented me from being radicalized by leftist ideologies. Strap in folks, this is going to be a doozy > The one insight from the book that I will always remember from the book is this: if you want to be rich, make something people want. and then there's “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a ne…

goddamn it -- i reversed my intended sense :(

I meant to say => I grant you that there is a sizable chunk of the population, most of them lefties, that do not believe this. I personally, as a matter of principle, do believe this.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#948

Post by askl »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #809
galenptacek wrote: post #602

Someone told me it was impossible to become an avogadrillionaire (to have a net worth of one mole, or approximately 6.02 x 10^23 dollars.) Now there's this founder I know whose startup grew 93% last month. Let's be conservative and say she has 2 million dollars. Let's calculate how many months of 93% growth it takes for something to grow 301,100,000,000,000,000x. The log base 1.93 of 301,100,000,000,000,000 is 61.209…

It’s actually easy and straight forward to become an avogadrillionaire, on paper that is, but still an avogadrillionaire: issue a token with a supply of 6.02*10^23, sell one token for $1, bam, avogadrillionaire

Crazy that you're giving that advice away for free. You should be selling a course instead.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#949

Post by avmich »

I wonder - to grow, say, 15% per month people have to pay the founder specific money for the product. Why exactly they pay that amount, and not less, say? Is it because they want founder to become a billionaire? The growth is measured in money, not product/service transactions.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#950

Post by latexr »

hammock wrote: post #701
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.

> 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. For those who are sympathetic to this idea, look no further than China. They have a very good system (superior to US-style taxes) for ensuring that no one gets “too rich” and that excess returns are captured and redistributed “fairly”

> For those who are sympathetic to this idea, look no further than China.

Alternatively, do. Don’t stop at the first bad argument, find the good ones too. You can look at the USA itself, for example.

https://www.factandmyth.com/taxes/eisenhower-tax-rates-90-pe...

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