Ask YC: how many of you want to be rich?
I know everyone says that to succeed as an entrepreneur you have to do it because it's what you love, not because you seek monetary wealth. I agree, to the extent that doing it because you love it has to be your primary motivator. but I also see nothing wrong with wanting to be rich, as long as you recognize it's a side effect of a very successful business. yet I feel like this sort of brazen aspiration is stigmatized. I know that a multi-million dollar payday or billion dollar valuation is a huge long shot, but to me shooting for it is part of the excitement of creating a business.
does anyone here consciously want to make millions? is some degree of megalomania an asset in the tech startup world?
23 comments
[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 73.4 ms ] threadCount me in.
is some degree of megalomania an asset in the tech startup world?
Muwahahahahaha. Damn right.
but I also see nothing wrong with wanting to be rich, as long as you recognize it's a side effect of a very successful business.
Exactly. Profit is just a way of keeping score... but the point of a business - IMO - is to achieve some end, which might or might not be as simple as "get rich." I just read Jim Collins' book "Built to Last" and he goes into a lot of depth about how important it is to build a company around a set of core values... to, as he puts it "build a clock, not just tell time." Good stuff.
I'm not sure if it counts for your question, though. In a sense you could say that I don't aim to "be rich" in a qualitative sense, but to "be middle class for a long time without working". And you may be asking why more people don't aspire to be rich in that qualitative sense? On the other hand, a person who can live a middle-class lifestyle for an extended time without working is objectively pretty rich...
I am lazy and hate to do have to do things to maintain my life.
People don't build social apps because they love chatrooms and twitter feeds, they build them because they like the thrill of being successful and getting paid.
If I had a steady income stream of 50k a year (adjusted for inflation over time) I would probably never try and make money.. I'd spend my time surfing and disc golfing and writing fibonnaci generators in the shakespeare programming language.
However, that's not the case. Instead I am happy with the compromise of trading my time for rates that I would have considered absurdly high just a couple years ago while making low effort hail mary's at passive income streams.
After a certain income level, I prefer to exchange money for free time. At this point in my life, I just sort of naturally live the Millionaire Next Door lifestyle, and there's only so many Chipotle meals and Threadless t-shirts I want to buy.
I learned the hard way (lots of dollars spent) that I prefer choosing my own projects, schedule, and interests to flying first class and buying designer clothes. It turns out that spending a lot of money is very stressful and empty for me. I was always worried about getting my money's worth and dismayed that nothing was as cool as I expected.
If all you want to do is make money, then you would be foolish to pursue entrepreneurship. Your expected return on starting a company is significantly less than your expected return on doing something like investment banking. Sure, you might strike it super-rich and become a billionaire through entrepreneurship. More likely than not, that ain't gonna happen. Conversely, you can almost guarantee yourself a fortune in the millions to tens of millions (and maybe even hundreds of millions) if you bust your ass in high finance and are great at it.
In summation: How many of us want to get rich? Probably most of us. How many are doing this solely to get rich? Only the silly ones.
Having the money to sort out the pithy details of day-to-day life like food, shelter, etc. and simultaneously funding my insane garage projects I embark upon constantly is a nice-to-have but not an expectation.
Really, in the end, I just want to build a legion of robotic minions.
I don't think that requires a million dollar payday.
The same reason I like looking at traffic stats, and income stats. More traffic, more money -> winning more. It's just a form or manifestation of internal motivation.
I make plenty of money now, but I still have a desperate need to grow/expand.
Expensive things don't bring me much pleasure. But, once you've had a significant illness or other setback, you learn that money can be the difference between quality of life and being screwed over. (Though it's no guarantee -- there are vampires who are good at taking advantage of the well-endowed.)
Secondly, I'd prefer to live where I can ensure I don't have to listen to my neighbors at all hours, depending on the luck of the draw.
P.S. I like _delirium's response, as well. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2423741
I think $100M is the low bar for me.
It's bad PR to talk about getting rich, that's why people rarely do it.
Namely, the first space elevator.
My concern isn't so much how much wealth I have (after achieving a certain level of security), but making sure it doesn't screw up my life. I think at times about the American fantasy of winning the lottery and I suspect that would wreak havoc with my life whereas earning it shouldn't have the same kind of impact. One problem with winning it is that it suddenly and irrevocably cuts a lot of your social ties -- for example, people typically leave their jobs promptly and often don't have any real plans other than to party hardy with their newfound wealth. But earning it usually involves building solid social ties: Relationships to the business community, to your customers, to your employees/coworkers/cofounders, and so on. I think when people have too much aimless time on their hands and too little in the way of healthy social ties, it tends to lead to bad things. A lot of people seem to desperately want to win money because they have unhealthy/unhappy social ties they wish they could escape (like their job) but the reality is that money by itself doesn't usually resolve personal problems. So being able to show up at work one day and tell your boss "Fuck you" to his/her face doesn't necessarily lead to the freedom and peacefulness that such people likely are envisioning.