HN Explorer

What differentiates people who start and run startups that sell for m/b-illions?

3 points by jkka ↗ HN
I am aware most businesses/startups either fail or sell for low millions or have a decent profit but nowhere close to hundreds of millions.

But there are a significant amount of people who have become filthy rich by selling their startups/businesses in short time periods too. And HN seems to have a few of them atleast and many people who know of such people.

So, my question is, what is so special about these people? How are they able to build and run something so complex and sell it for huge amounts? Is it IQ, hard work, connections or something else?

15 comments

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cratermoon
It's just luck. Random chance.
benj111
Luck is an element, I also think you need a certain amount of psychopathy.

You need to bs a lot of people, be single minded to the extreme.

I'm not saying it's universal, I'm always surprised how people look up to successful business people as if that success suggests they are a 'better' person.

cratermoon
I am in 100% agreement with that. As a kid in school I was taught the industrialists and moguls were great men, and a few things like the occasional anti-trust (Standard) or corruption (Teapot Dome) were aberrations, regrettable excesses to be reined in.

Flash forward to my adulthood and me realizing that history as taught in US schools is a farce.

jkka
Is it really? Luck to have a better IQ/genes/some other parameter than most other people?
ashwinnair99
I think its grit and self belief that I can keep going.
rhelz
I've talked to both parties: the successful tend to give the lion's share of the credit to themselves, the unsuccessful tend to give the lion's share of the blame to circumstance.
nullindividual
Dishonesty, fraud, what other negative human traits does money attract that you want to pack in?
L1K2
This is simply knowledge. If you have knowledge and intuition, you can earn a lot of money.
jkka
Most people on here on HN have a lot of technical knowledge and they do seem to do decently well, but millions?
tamimio
It’s pure luck, don’t believe anything else, not intelligence, nor commitment, nor top colleges, nor “my 10 morning routine/silly quote” or even your parents’ success, sure all or any of that might contribute to a degree, but the biggest factor is luck. Look at it as a 3D fast moving randomly sinusoidal waves in XYZ space, if your wave is happen to identically match the success-wave (and what is a success-wave for you isn’t the same for another person), and you took that opportunity, then you become “filthy rich”. The only exception is probably some royal families etc., but for the people who “become” rich, it is all luck.
jkka
Luck seems too simplistic an answer. You still need to have the necessary qualities to be able to recognize when an opportunity comes your way.

Luck can't be the only factor to riches. There has to be more.

appplication
Luck isn’t the only factor, but it’s one of the only factors that is requisite. Hard work and competence help but aren’t required. Luck is always required.

For what it’s worth, luck isn’t rabbit’s feet and horseshoes. When folks talk about luck in the context of entrepreneurship, it’s the chaotic, complex, unmeasurable, unquantifiable, uncontrollable, and often imperceptible factors that can lead to wildly different outcomes for the same idea and quality of execution from two different individuals.

For example, you’re not the first to think “If we could empower doctors with AI, we could save billions and improve patient outcomes”. There are probably 10,000 or more people who have already pitched or are actively in the process of preparing VC pitches for what are essentially all just variations on the same idea. Luck is the fact that your former college roommate raised a series A from Sequoia last year and is willing to vouch for you to their contacts. And further, that those contacts feel like it’s the right time to expose themselves to this part of the market. And that you had no traffic on your way to the pitch, that your IBS didn’t act up mid pitch, and that this is the first day in a week that the VC you’re pitching to isn’t hung over. Luck is them deciding, before you ever step in the room, that as long as you don’t fuck up that they are feeling ready to fund exactly a medical AI venture, and you’re the first in line since they developed that resolve.

Luck is something that can be influenced, to a degree. It’s stochastic. You roll a d20 once and you’re probably not getting a nat 20. If you keep rolling though, one of those is likely going to pan out. Luck is also having the background to keep rolling though. It’s the difference between being able to take 3-months off work and spending all of your life savings because you’re a paramedic making $45k/year with a great idea and ambition, vs being comfortable taking 1-2 years off to perfect your pitch and build a compelling product because you used to work for Google and even if this doesn’t land you’re not going to have a hard time getting hired at Facebook for $100k/year more than you used to make. In this sense, luck is the difference between your Plan B potentially breaking you completely, or leaving you on a lower cloud among the 1%.

pangolinja
The successful normally have rich or influential family ties (Gates, Bezos etc), government or intelligence investment or support (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, SpaceX), are there to help with money laundering (Bored Apes, FTX, RobinHood) or fraud (FTX, Theranos, WeWork).
jkka
The thing is, not every rich guy becomes anywhere close to Gates or Bezos. What did they do differently or what makes them different than other similarly rich peers?

For govt/intel investment, what did these guys do or what made them stand out to receive such investment?

See, privilege and luck may be factors but there has to be some differentiating factors for these people. WeWork and Theranos founders are said to be extremely charismatic. How? What makes them become like that? Genes? Upbringing?