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How to earn a billion dollars

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#981

Post by robotnikman »

old-gregg wrote: post #604
wat10000 wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post is patronizing as hell, it’s no wonder people respond to it negatively. Patting people on the head and saying “you moron, it’s just two numbers” isn’t a good way to make an argument.

Sam Harris often makes an argument that I both hate and kind of agree with. He says that exchanging arguments and having a debate only works when the two arguing parties share a foundation. The debate’s purpose is to reconcile a measurable difference of opinion. In this case, I feel there’s no shared foundation. Half of the commenters here don’t seem to understand what money is or how it works. There's no soil in whi…

>He says that exchanging arguments and having a debate only works when the two arguing parties share a foundation. The debate’s purpose is to reconcile a measurable difference of opinion.

I've observed this in a lot of internet arguments, but have not been able to put it into words until you said this. It feels like everyone is more concerned about 'winning' the argument more than anything else.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#982

Post by 2001zhaozhao »

It's probably possible to earn a $1B as a good startup. I think this article is right that it is a lot more possible to ethically get there as a startup than through other means, which are often much more political and thus overwhelmingly reward the people who are willingh to do whatever is necessary.

However, it's still sure as hell a lot easier to earn it as an exploitative startup than as a good one.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#983

Post by elzbardico »

dismalaf wrote: post #840
hammock wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

The people on HN have changed. It used to be founders and people doing things. Founders of some now huge companies were on HN. Interesting and well known hackers too. Now it's SWEs who work in big tech, hate their jobs and are afraid of being laid off who just parrot politically expedient current talking points. x.com is more interesting these days, even for tech.

Most founder nowadays are not engineers or people who really can create anything, but well connected business idiots.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#984

Post by roguetoasterer »

didibus wrote: post #660
Telemakhos wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say she has ten employees. They all voluntarily agree to work for her: slavery is illegal, so people work for others on a consensual basis. Both the employer and employee negotiated and consented to a salary or wage schedule for that employee. The employer pays the agreed-upon compensation, and the employee receives it. If the company makes an unexpectedly large profit, the employer is not obligated to redistri…

> If the company makes an unexpectedly large profit, the employer is not obligated to redistribute that to her employees in addition to the already agreed-upon and paid compensation. What if they were ? That's the whole point of the conversation lol. It's like you're side stepping the entire discourse. Maybe the company should be obligated to redistribute it to her employees, or to the public, etc.

Compulsory profit-sharing seems like it might have some unexpected downstream effects. I think we already see some fairly creative book-keeping in industries where there's utility in reducing your company's apparent profit. The loopholes are many and the regulatory burden of identifying and closing them all is significant.

And there's no guarantee my base pay would stay the same if profit-sharing become the law of the land-- it doesn't seem improbable that my base might decrease in this new economic landscape. Suddenly, part of my income waxes and wanes according to strategic decisions that I don't get to play a part in, according to market forces that I can't fully predict. My life overall becomes more volatile.

I'm not against voluntary profit-sharing. The company I work for now does it, after number of years of employment. I just suspect a blanket mandate would come with some baggage.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#985

Post by johnea »

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)…

Criticism may be more common, but the downvoting has not changed.

See the post above, where I criticize him and am being downvoted into oblivion...

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#986

Post by _carbyau_ »

dotancohen wrote: post #870
_carbyau_ wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for his other essays but this article was not great. He basically does some maths to show exponential growth. The definition of "earn" is not on the chopping block. Nor is what it means to "cheat" - which he introduces pretty early on. And times change. With the announcement: "[Insert name] is a billionaire!" It used to be: "Congrats to them for making the world better in some way and reaping the reward…

> It used to be: "Congrats to them for making the world better in some way and reaping the rewards." > Now it is: "What did they leverage to force another subscription on us?" Are you seriously asking how Elon Musk made the world better in some way? How about catalysing the move away from fossil fuels? How about inexpensive spaceflight?

The article is about how to become a billionaire.

Are you seriously saying you think Elon Musk falls into the "now it is" category? That's making up something to get angry about.

He's been a billionaire for quite a while. IE he falls into the "used to be" category.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#988

Post by peterashford »

dotancohen wrote: post #870
_carbyau_ wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for his other essays but this article was not great. He basically does some maths to show exponential growth. The definition of "earn" is not on the chopping block. Nor is what it means to "cheat" - which he introduces pretty early on. And times change. With the announcement: "[Insert name] is a billionaire!" It used to be: "Congrats to them for making the world better in some way and reaping the reward…

> It used to be: "Congrats to them for making the world better in some way and reaping the rewards." > Now it is: "What did they leverage to force another subscription on us?" Are you seriously asking how Elon Musk made the world better in some way? How about catalysing the move away from fossil fuels? How about inexpensive spaceflight?

The guy who is on track for causing 9 million deaths? That guy is your example of someone who made the world a better place? The guy who supports far right groups, white supremacists, throws nazi salutes, pushes an AI that makes child porn and turned Twitter into a right wing nazi loving cess pool? Yeah, the world is just swell now he's here.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/04/world/lancet-usaid-global...

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#989

Post by runamok »

I like how the fact that most likely this theoretical company is not a company of 1. What about the employees frankly doing most of the work? Are the customers getting a good product at a fair price? Are their vendors getting paid a fair and sustainable amount? Are the regions they exist in getting paid the correct taxes to repay them for the services and infra they provide? Contrast how Steve Jobs treated most Apple employees when Apple went public vs. how Steve Wozniak did. I do agree a founder that creates something valuable (in both financial and societal ways) is mostly a good thing. But when you look closely enough at how gig workers are treated you start wondering if the billionaires minted at Uber, Amazon, etc. can ever fantasize that they have clean hands.

Re: How to earn a billion dollars

#990

Post by DrScientist »

runeks wrote: post #974
DrScientist wrote: post #927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem here is the word 'earn' is doing a lot of heavily lifting. Let's take Y combinator. He is in the money lending business - where he sells the idea of becoming a billionaire ( which is possible in software as it so easily scales relative to other types of businesses ) to young people so they work crazily hard. Most of them fail ( which he doesn't focus on ), but just like a bookie who profits from g…

> So he has set up a system that extracts value from others. That's a very negative way to describe buying a share in a company.

I'm pointing out the reality.

As I said, I'm not a person that thinks that correct allocation of capital isn't a useful role. Really good VCs and investors are really really important.

However like art - it can be both simultaneously true that art has intrinsic value and that the art market is seriously corrupt.

Sure Paul adds value - but I'd humbly suggest not as much as he has extracted.

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