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Comment by gozo | Hacker News Reader

I guess this isn't the intended message, but whenever I read an article like this I'm happy to be nowhere near SV. I can see myself waking up after ten years realizing how I wasted my life on pretending that crude forms of desktop publishing and business intelligence is somehow the bleeding edge of technology.

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What, you don't have all night jam sessions at your 3 bedroom house in San Fran? Just picking yourself up by your bootstraps, struggling to make it, in your 3 bedroom house in San Fran. You know, down in the much and the mire, busting out LoC tirelessly while worrying about how you're gonna keep the lights on, in your 3 bedroom house in San Fran...

This reminds me when I asked a person who is now a "worlds youngest self made billionaire" club member how they possibly built paid their bills while in the early phases of their startup, that time when you're too small to even consider funding, but big enough to warrant a couple hires to help lay a foundation. The reply, "Ha! [founder's name]'s family is loaded...".

That's when I realized I had worked on the underlying skills, I had ideas, but I missed the most important part... money and/or rich friends.

That means first you have to get rich and then work on the skills

If only I'd known sooner, now I'm just over here with a bunch of computer and development knowledge... I should have just studied money.

"I should have just studied money."

People buy things which make their life better than it was before they bought the product or service. The magnitude is not important. You now know 'money', if you have the dev knowledge GO BUILD SOMETHING OF VALUE!

It's a feasible strategy - there are thousands of entrepreneurs who did just that: do an MSc/PhD in Finance/Economics (or these days just any old STEM subject), join a bank's trading floor or a big investment company, put aside 2-3 million in 10-15 years - then get out of the rat race and create a start-up or become an angel investor.

Of course there's ten times more people who inherit a million or two of seed capital instead...

This is true for many entrepreneurs. Evan Spiegel's dad is a rich lawyer, as is Mark Zuckerberg's and Bill Gates'

Travis doesn't fall in this category though. He got his 3 bedroom house with his own money

I believe Mark Zuckerberg's father is a dentist.

and his mom is a psychiatrist, so they're both "doctors" http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-dentist-dad-...

There are plenty of reasonably priced apartments outside of SF and Palo Alto. It means you might need to live in the east bay or somewhere less expensive south of the city but it's possible and maybe necessary in the early days.

Travis bought his house after selling RedSwoosh and being for 4 years without salary. He deserves every penny of it.

Startups aren't about "bleeding edge tech" though. Startups take ideas and technology and build innovative products that solve real problems. What those products are built on can be anything - it doesn't matter whether the tech was invented 5 minutes ago or 5 decades ago, if it solves the problem better than any current solution then that's a good thing, and that's what the startup should use.

I would much rather work on something with desktop publishing and business intelligence for 10 years and look back knowing I helped people solve an actual problem they had than look back knowing I worked on the shiniest new toy before anyone else.

And then there's tech like getting rid of all the toll takers on the GG bridge. I honestly haven't crossed to bridge since the complete conversion. Partly, because I never found San Franciso that romantic, don't work in the city anymore, and part, because I don't want to wait for a bill in the mail.

Hay--GG bridge district members. I have a feeling you are missing out of a lot of toll form casual bridge users? Some of us would pay your tolls with our spare physical currency, and spend the day in that city--buying stuff?

yes--it's off topic, and I don't think a traditional startup had anything to do with the the elimination of toll takers.

I just hope technology solves real problems, and isn't used to make the rich richer, or only provides good tech jobs in good unusual economic boom times? I know right now I could live without 75% of this new technology. Kind of a weird confession--huh? And no--I'm not a Luddite? Well, I hope I'm not? I know, I do miss hanging out in Book stores? Starbucks doesn't cut it? And, I haven't been to a movie theater in years? And I honestly don't like meeting people over the Internet? I do like the immediacy of this tool though?

Earnest question then: what do you see as the bleeding edge of technology? Where is that happening? What companies are doing it?

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