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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#961

Post by causal »

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)…

But it's just not a high quality essay. This writing would have few if any upvotes coming from a random Substack blog.

I still really like some PG essays, but PG used to be a much better writer.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#962

Post by Nevermark »

tsimionescu wrote: post #861
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.

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…

You> you could use his exact explanation to claim that good founders will soon become trillionaires,

PG> I don't want anyone to accuse me of using unrealistic numbers, so let's take a more conservative growth rate. Let's see what happens at 15% a month. That's not rare at all.

You> it is anyway limited by the size of the market(s) it is operating in

PG> how long you can continue to grow at that rate depends on the size of the market.

You> Then, he completely hand waves away the externalities, lawlessness, self dealing and similar issues

Not addressing an issue, that doesn't undermine the points he does make, is not hand waving.

Hallmarks of clear instead of reactionary thinking: you don't lash out at people for things they said, that you agree with, or things they didn't say, that you would have disagreed with.

Make your own (good) points. No need for framing around disagreement or other misleading tie ins.

I feel just as disgusted and frustrated by some rich people. But lots of people quietly become billionaires now, from normal companies that produce sensible services or goods people want. Substitute "rich" for "billionaire" to account for inflation, and increased globalization, and this has been true for a long time.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#963

Post by mbgerring »

This is so stupid.

You can’t “earn” a billion dollars doing the thing that the vast majority of people do for money, which is selling your labor.

No one can argue with this.

We all understand that if people who own a lot of capital give a lot of it to you, you can grow that capital into more than a billion dollars.

Most people do not have access to the kind of capital required to do this. Most people never will. The avenues open to the vast majority of people on Earth cannot lead to becoming a billionaire.

Paul Graham knows this, and he is being deliberately obtuse.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#964

Post by mbgerring »

mbgerring wrote: post #963

This is so stupid. You can’t “earn” a billion dollars doing the thing that the vast majority of people do for money, which is selling your labor. No one can argue with this. We all understand that if people who own a lot of capital give a lot of it to you, you can grow that capital into more than a billion dollars. Most people do not have access to the kind of capital required to do this. Most people never will. The…

“All you have to do is have a good enough idea and someone will fund it!”

This is a myth. To access capital, in Silicon Valley and anywhere else, you have to engage in elaborate court protocol and social climbing. You have to have the right kind of idea, in a niche that is interesting among the capital-owning class.

Look at what’s getting funded in Silicon Valley right now. Nobody wants any of this AI shit. There is no issue in America that is more unifying across all of our usual dividing lines than opposition to AI.

It’s getting funded because AI is interesting in the social universe of people with billions of dollars to invest.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#965

Post by throwaway-11-1 »

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”

[dead]

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#966

Post by a3f8c2d »

OrangeMusic wrote: post #907
srpablo wrote: post #851

Disco Stu meme Paul is my favorite example of "brain gout." I learned what gout was as "a disease kings used to get by eating foods that were too rich." Paul's writing when he was closer to reality, in the early 2000's, was a lot more insightful, because he was closer to reality. But if you've spent 21 years never having a material concern, and increasingly interacting with other rich people (or young people who idol…

> Buy your own groceries. Cook your own meals What's the point of being rich if you're living like a chump!

Cooking your own meals is “living like a chump”? That attitude says more about your values than your wealth.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#967

Post by xnx »

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…

Easiest way to become an avogadrillionaire is to start with 2 avogadrillions.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#968

Post by Tiktaalik »

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.

It isn’t just rent seeking, it is regulation to try to compensate for the negative externalities of a private ride hail system (ie. Induced traffic).

Part of the origin story of taxi regulation is the fact that in the early 20th century unregulated cabs caused an explosion in traffic congestion. People complained and so the amount of cabs was limited. An example of the tragedy of the commons.

I expect that eventually we will see the same thing with Waymo etc but we’ll see.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#969

Post by stackbutterflow »

arjie wrote: post #356

There is an argument to be made that societal structure enables much of that wealth to be made. J K Rowling can make a billion dollars not just because people want her stuff and give her money for it but because we have a system of intellectual property and a bunch of guys who enforce it. We all pay for that and Rowling benefits. It’s true that this happens, but our system of taxation takes care of this pretty well.…

She can sell books because millions of kids were taught to read.

How fair is it that she becomes a billionaire while most teachers struggle?

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#970

Post by ejpir »

Nevermark wrote: post #962
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…

You> you could use his exact explanation to claim that good founders will soon become trillionaires, PG> I don't want anyone to accuse me of using unrealistic numbers, so let's take a more conservative growth rate. Let's see what happens at 15% a month. That's not rare at all. You> it is anyway limited by the size of the market(s) it is operating in PG> how long you can continue to grow at that rate depends on the si…

millionaire is not a billionaire :)
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