Some startup inspiration: Homes of the world’s billionaires | Hacker News Reader

Some startup inspiration: Homes of the world’s billionaires

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15 pointsedw51923 comments

Maybe it just me, but I never found the huge, marbleized, gold-plated mansions to be particularly appealing. Across the street from where I live, there are rows of multi-million dollar mansions that look like they were ripped right out of Scarface, and I just wonder what the motivation is... Don't get me wrong, I intend to have a nice living arrangement when it's all said and done, but I feel like that amount of luxury would actually detract from the livability.

What people like about those places is the idea of living in them.

Unlike physical stuff, ideas can be arbitrarily expensive, so they comprise a lot of what gets sold to the very rich. I suspect practically everyone who owns a Picasso, for example, likes the idea of owning a Picasso more than they like the actual painting.

Seth Godin wrote a whole book about this. (All Marketers are Liars, my favorite SG book as it were.)

The greatest meal I ever had was at Picasso at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The decor you can guess. The food was great, but damn, the paintings were ugly.

if room quantity > number people living in the house + 2 then it is a waste. in fact i would say these people are pretty dumb. no matte how much i make i wont buy anything other than http://napaprefab.com/ but hey that's only me.

The great thing about modern life is that the rich no longer live different lives, they just waste a bunch of space they don't live in, glue diamonds to everything, pay more for the same food, and then live pretty much the same as everyone else.

Health care is about the only thing left that challenges this notion and I expect we'll get that worked out in the next 50 years or so.

Don't fantasize about a mansion. Fantasize about an excited user.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=74030

Amen to that brother!

I know that wasn't intended to sound salacious, but it does!

Only to you, sanj. :-)

They are atrocious. If I had a billion dollars, I would build something like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein

(Actually, that is practically the perfect example of atrocious living quarters, but if you're going to do bombast, do it right.) If I had 10s of millions, I would pick up one of these, which are sometimes surprisingly cheap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau

If material goods are any motivation, I personally think this is far better to visualize:

http://www.yafanet.com/pics_news/2007-11/ferrari599_4.jpg

:-)

http://www.eclipseaviation.com

killing me man... my profit targets just got pushed up from $300,000 to $3,000,000! :-) The Moller Skycar (www.moller.com) is also an exciting project, although I don't know when it will hit mass market.

The only way to fly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

The Skycar is an awesome concept. I have been keeping track of it for a few years now. They are already mass producing the m200 flying saucer that only carries one person to fund the development of the Skycar.

Moller Aerospace is based here in Davis, and I don't see any signs of them mass-producing anything.

As far as I know, he has a single prototype which may or may not hover when attached by a wire to a crane. There was a press release about six months ago which said they were entering production, but as far as I know it hasn't happened.

He was sued by the SEC in 2003 for making false claims about his product (among other things). Considering he has been working on it for 40 years, it's probably all a scheme to relieve investors of their money.

There is definitely not a good correlation between high wealth and high taste (especially given the picture of the first house). But I would love to be proved wrong by some increasingly wealthy Ycers here :)

No mention of this guy? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6712605.stm

That doesn't inspire me at all.

Buffett inspires me...the rest turn my stomach.

How about Dilbert's Ultimate House? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=141389

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