How to become rich....

[Kneel B4 Zod]

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I would say that its much easier to become rich starting your own business than it is to work for a corp.

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If you are talking about $5MM rich, I tend to think you're not right. If you're talking about $50MM rich, I am dead sure you are right.

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You are probably right, and I defer to someone with way more experience, but for someone like me, with a generic computer science degree (insert any marketing etc from a state/lower tier private school) it seems like going it on your own is the road to wealth? And im the majority, your top tier schools are obv in the minority. It seems to me that we are trending back to the days when entrepreneurship is the way to become rich once again.

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yes and no. the failure rate, even for start-ups run by bright people and funded by the top VC's, is incredibly high. other guys here know more about this than me.

however, I do think running your own business can be a great way to achieve true financial independence. lots of people lack the drive/intelligence/ability/luck to do it well.

[iSTRONG]

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starting a business is probably -EV

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That makes no sense. What makes you think that entrepreneurship is -ev?

I do agree that it's definitly higher variance than a corp job tho.

[Evan]

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i think that the richest people don't necessarily want to be rich as their first goal. it's much deeper than that. they crave power and success (or at least society's definition of success), and have the ambition to get themselves there.

Just look at the heavyweights: Bill Gates, Trump, etc.

Mark Zuckerberg (owner of Facebook) turned down almost a billion. The marginal utility of having more than that kinda money is obv zero: for him, its about the power and achieving perfection as much as he can through his company.

I recently had a conversation with my friend where I determined that neither of us would be extremely rich (10 mill or more net worth lets say). Even though I go to a top university and could leverage my degree into a lot in terms of money and business, I just dont think I have the personality or the desire.

I'm not sure I answered the question at all but those are my two cents on being rich.

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I think another big thing that your have to want (in addition to power and success) is to directly change the world. Obviously this doesn't often mean ending hunger of war or things like that. Take facebook, since it was your example. I'm sure a big part of the reason he started the company in the first place was a desire to change the way people communicate. Without that I don't think wanting power and success is enough, because that's very close to just wanting money and it's easy to settle for "a lot" instead of "an effing boatload" or whatever terms you prefer.

[guids]

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starting a business is probably -EV

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That makes no sense. What makes you think that entrepreneurship is -ev?

I do agree that it's definitly higher variance than a corp job tho.

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obviously it depends on what sector you are talking about, but I can def see over 50% of whatever random startup biz you are talking about failing within the first 5 years.

[Duke]

Plastics

[Evan]

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starting a business is probably -EV

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That makes no sense. What makes you think that entrepreneurship is -ev?

I do agree that it's definitly higher variance than a corp job tho.

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Failure rates are through the roof. On a whole, I would bet "entrepreneurship" is a net losing career. Now that is largely because a lot of people that try it shouldn't have. If you look at all the deal's VC's say no too it would probably reinforce this. Also, a lot of the losses of the "entrepreneurship carrer" are not losses suffered by the entrepreneur himself, but rather by the people that fund the company. If you raise $100 million from a VC and end up bankrupt you may not have actually lost anything (other than opportunities due to time), but there was a $100 million loss that probably should be accounted for somewhere.

[guids]

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i think that the richest people don't necessarily want to be rich as their first goal. it's much deeper than that. they crave power and success (or at least society's definition of success), and have the ambition to get themselves there.

Just look at the heavyweights: Bill Gates, Trump, etc.

Mark Zuckerberg (owner of Facebook) turned down almost a billion. The marginal utility of having more than that kinda money is obv zero: for him, its about the power and achieving perfection as much as he can through his company.

I recently had a conversation with my friend where I determined that neither of us would be extremely rich (10 mill or more net worth lets say). Even though I go to a top university and could leverage my degree into a lot in terms of money and business, I just dont think I have the personality or the desire.

I'm not sure I answered the question at all but those are my two cents on being rich.

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I think another big thing that your have to want (in addition to power and success) is to directly change the world. Obviously this doesn't often mean ending hunger of war or things like that. Take facebook, since it was your example. I'm sure a big part of the reason he started the company in the first place was a desire to change the way people communicate. Without that I don't think wanting power and success is enough, because that's very close to just wanting money and it's easy to settle for "a lot" instead of "an effing boatload" or whatever terms you prefer.

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You know, I guess that is the crux of what Im asking. In business, Im not trying to change the world with anything, Im trying to streamline, put forth a good product, and do everything in that sector perfectly, above and beyond what any nearest competitor can do. Im not trying to change the world, Im just trying to make a ton of money.

[Evan]

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starting a business is probably -EV

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That makes no sense. What makes you think that entrepreneurship is -ev?

I do agree that it's definitly higher variance than a corp job tho.

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obviously it depends on what sector you are talking about, but I can def see over 50% of whatever random startup biz you are talking about failing within the first 5 years.

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You probably could have said something like 99% and 2 years and not lost much accuracy. I don't actually have any data, so I'm kind of pulling that out of my ass, but there's certainly much higher than a 50% failure rate and it usually takes a lot less than 5 years.

[sethypooh21]

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starting a business is probably -EV

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That makes no sense. What makes you think that entrepreneurship is -ev?


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I mean that it is probably -EV relative to a "real job." I believe it is probably demonstrably so in that the vast majority of businesses fail, and quickly.

[guids]

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starting a business is probably -EV

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That makes no sense. What makes you think that entrepreneurship is -ev?

I do agree that it's definitly higher variance than a corp job tho.

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obviously it depends on what sector you are talking about, but I can def see over 50% of whatever random startup biz you are talking about failing within the first 5 years.

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You probably could have said something like 99% and 2 years and not lost much accuracy. I don't actually have any data, so I'm kind of pulling that out of my ass, but there's certainly much higher than a 50% failure rate and it usually takes a lot less than 5 years.

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in the restaurant biz, its 80% in 2 years or so, I cant imagine any other sector being anywhere near as high.