What would you do to make millions?

[The4Aces]

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make the next YouTube or Skype or eBay

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yeah... pretty much.

I know one thing i WOULDN'T do to make money is try to make ANOTHER youtube, skype or ebay.

So many people say "OMG! MYSPACE IS HUGE!!! I'M GOING TO CREATE ANOTHER MYSPACE" not realizing that they have very little chance of success.

Discovering what the web needs next is the best way to get close to success.

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I would guess that there were similar products to each of these things. The people who made these products just did something BETTER then everyone else.

So the product that might be the next BIG thing might already be out there, just the person that developed it sucks at marketing or implimentation. You need to find that idea and replicate it, and not suck.

[BradleyT]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
make the next YouTube or Skype or eBay

[/ QUOTE ]


yeah... pretty much.

I know one thing i WOULDN'T do to make money is try to make ANOTHER youtube, skype or ebay.

So many people say "OMG! MYSPACE IS HUGE!!! I'M GOING TO CREATE ANOTHER MYSPACE" not realizing that they have very little chance of success.

Discovering what the web needs next is the best way to get close to success.

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Although if you enter a billion dollar market, you can still take your "small cut" of a few million dollars. Look at Jones Soda, they only take $31 million/year out of the $60 billion soft-drink industry. Think their owners are crying?

[Freakin]

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"Hitting it big" is not a quick low work effort... Hitting it big, generally takes a tremendous amount of work over an extended period...

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and even if you do everything right most high-quality startup .coms only have a 1 in 6 chance of success or so

[talentdeficit]

of all the startups that were born out of the ashes of the dotcom explosion, the ones that succeeded were the ones conceived and carried by programmers. ideas are cheap and the notion that myspace, youtube, google and skype did anything revolutionary or better than their competitors is wrong. they did things just well enough and faster than their competitors. and they were able to do that by being lightweight and integrated. their decision makers were their programmers. there was no process or management getting in the way of progress.

anyways, startups are only a good way to get rich if you're okay with the likelihood you won't get rich. if i HAD to make a million dollars, i'd sell drugs. if i HOPED to make a million dollars and i had an idea i was passionate about, i'd do the startup thing.

[Sniper]

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anyways, startups are only a good way to get rich if you're okay with the likelihood you won't get rich. if i HAD to make a million dollars, i'd sell drugs. if i HOPED to make a million dollars and i had an idea i was passionate about, i'd do the startup thing.

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In the grand scheme of things, "a million dollars" isn't that big a number...

10,000 sales of a $100 product
1,000 sales of a $1,000 product

The question on "a million", is more, "how fast?"

[synchronistic]

If you want to make hundreds of millions you either have to invent something, radicalize a market, or learn to invest other people's money successfully.

The easiest way to do it is to partner with someone who is smart. You have to be smart enough to hire or partner with the people who know the things you don't.

As for me, my partner is an ASIC chip designer and we're working on taking a new chip design into aerospace, medical, and media technologies. It's been a long difficult process, but hopefully it will be worth it in 5 years.

The few people I've known who are self-made multi-millionaires (worth hundred million+) or are on their way have all been driven, focused, smart, lucky and sometimes megalomaniacs.

One started an aerospace company, one is a quantitative analysis genius who manages his own fund, one is a delusional fashion designer, and the coolest (who I don't really know) is a ruthless chick who started a poker site that every U.S. poker player misses.

[DrewDevil]

I think youtube was sold within 2 years of its launch date. they may have worked hard, but not for very long.

[Ignorant]

Create a new eBay.

The fees are getting ridiculous.