How to become rich....

[Scorpion Man]

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I think I would appreciate it more if you power hitters answered more of OPs original question rather than these tangents. Is it more important in achieving wealth to love something and dedicate yourself to it, or dedicate yourself to the pursuit of "getting rich?"

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This is pretty simple. Starting your own (non financially oriented) business (if it's real...not a dry cleaner, but something that has a shot at getting scale and going public or being acquired) is the best way to get really rich (let's say $100m+). But it has massive variance, and many very good and very (and I mean absolute top of the heap) people will fail at this.

Working in the finance business has much much less variance and gives very good probability (if you are skilled and pedigreed) of finishing with at least $10m, with reasonable probabilities of multiples of that.

By the way, best possible route of combining variance and the general upside of finance oriented businesses? Start a finance oriented business! It costs little to start a hedge fund and you have a reasonable shot at real money. That said, this is only true if you have a certain kind of background and skillset.


FWIW, I will take the guy who is desperate to get rich (that was me) over the guy who just loves his product any day of the week, although the product loving guys will show up once in awhile as huge winners. The variance is just way too big. That is why venture capital is so much better than entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs have a portfolio of one. Look that one up in your finance theory books.