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Comment by trevyn | Hacker News Reader

Take a wealthy person, ask them what they would do if they had zero money and connections, and teach that as a skill.

No. Ask a person why they are "successful" and they will give you the answer they tell themselves. "I worked harder than others, I am smarter, I went to a good school, etc. etc." While they think that's true, it's mostly hogwash and most people can't tell you why they are or aren't successful.

The problem is that most of what it comes down to is luck. Luck in the sense of time and place. People born into a wealthy family or even with two loving parents are lucky and way more likely to be wealthy than those that were born without.

Warren Buffett came of age in the greatest period of prosperity in American history. Bill Gates came of age right at the time that PCs became possible. Bezos was first to market on a new and unproven platform. Zuckerberg got lucky because he was able to get started when broadband penetration in developing countries was finally starting to get some traction.

No man is an island and teaching success as a skill is just silly in my opinion.

That's very simplistic. Of course they were lucky, but the thing that differentiated these people your mentioned from everyone else with their original privilege was their ability to make the best of the opportunities awarded to them. “Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity"

The whole point of his question was that you take those advantages away from those men and see what they would do. The key is their creativity and ability to find ways to make money.

Bill Gates was actually famously asked a version of this question. (What would you do if you were poor with no education and lived in a third world country.) He responded "Buy Chickens".

> The whole point of his question was that you take those advantages away from those men and see what they would do. The key is their creativity and ability to find ways to make money.

And the answer is that most wealthy people, when reset to zero, would never be able to regain their wealth. The only way they may have a shot is by exploiting things from their formally wealthy life (e.g. contacts, connections, niche industry knowledge, or an ivy league degree).

The one thing in common about the mega-rich is that they are obsessed with money and/or success. Warren's family members often complained he didn't spend enough time with the family because he was in his den sifting accounting and finance material. Warren is in love with numbers.

The thing is the obsession trait doesn't necessarily scale. If you cloned a billion Gates', that would NOT give us a billion Microsofts. It's not a zero sum game, but pretty close to one. There's only so much room in any given niche.

Another thing, I've been using and following Microsoft for about 3 decades. They didn't do anything special or innovative in my opinion, at least not relative to their size. MS just did smart marketing, acquisitions, pricing, and packaging. MS mostly leveraged monopoly in one category to gain another category: not raw merit. If MS never existed, the world would be the same or even better off: more OS and office-software choice. I have a bit more respect for Steve Jobs: he spotted useful product configurations before any one else (with means). MS just copied/purchased trends after it was obvious they were catching on.

Really? The world would be the same if Microsoft never existed or better off?

No doubt IBM would have led innovation if not kneecapped by M$.

I don't mean exactly the same, but in terms of general innovation. There were decent, good, and great alternatives to ALL of their key products: PC GUI's, spreadsheets, word-processors, desktop databases, etc. Heck, they purchased most of them from other co's. Granted, MS usually charged less, at least initially, but that's because they took an up-front loss in that product to gain market-share. But then stagnated once they killed competition. I know an obvious MS-Access bug not fixed for 15 years.

You have no problem ignoring all the hard work that goes into becoming successful and your comment comes across as... one should just sit around waiting to be lucky. You say that during the golden age of internet based business opportunities and funding. I suppose that you think Tiger Woods was lucky enough to win 79 tournaments and 14 majors because he got lucky?

Opportunity = hard work + luck

We as individuals should strive to learn how to be successful by looking at those who are successful, and many of those qualities are right in front of our faces. Hell just search for "discipline" or "confidence building" on youtube and one can find how to apply the correct qualities within a few hours. Try David Goggins if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Bill gates, bezos and zuckerbeg aren’t really good examples of “wealthy” because they are so beyond wealthy that it’s not even really worthwhile trying to emulate them for practical purposes. The very definition of the ultra rich is that there are only a few of them. (Realistically no one is going to become a billionaire, and it’s not even worth trying really. 100 million is already unlimited money for all intents and purposes) So it’s much more practical to think about people that are able to provide for their families comfortably. When you start thinking about wealth in terms of billions, it completely skews perception of what actions you shod be taking, and is ultimately a pretty unrealistic and unnecessary goal. I see so much “entrepreneurship” garbage peddling where kids now think being an entrepreneur is about becoming a billionaire and redefining entire industries. When it’s really much more practical and useful to think about how you can run a small business. If you get good at that then you can run a medium business and make make a few million which is plenty enough to be happy and live a good life.

I think you're both right and wrong. In our current system, yes, a lot of success comes down to luck. However, that doesn't mean that it's impossible to remove a lot of the luck from the equation.

For just one example, if you look at the average person's level of financial literacy today, the situation is appallingly bad. So statistically, it's true that you have to be lucky to be financially literate, but that doesn't mean it inherently requires luck to be able to learn these things. It's just not stuff that most people are even aware of, because nobody is teaching them. It's not an unfixable problem.

At the extreme end of the spectrum, yes, it requires a lot of luck to become as rich as Gates or Buffett, but I don't think that's what OP is trying to achieve. Helping everyday people achieve better financial outcomes is a very different goal from trying to break into the top 0.1%, and is much more achievable IMO.

Take a wealthy person, ask them what they're addicted to, and milk them for all they're worth

Most wealthy people did not start off with zero money and connections. Most wealthy people are born into privilege. They can afford to fail and try again. They have family and friends that can help them access resources and connections that the rest of us don't even know exist much less know how to get ahold of.

Despite the notion of the "American Dream", in our country, if you are born poor you will most likely stay poor.

Privilege as defined by what? Having good teachers? Having parents not drug addicted or in prison?

Not sure how a start up can commodify business connections, family ties, inheritance or being born with money, a support network and in a good school district.

Step 1: Gain money and connections, one way or another.

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