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Comment by scootklein | Hacker News Reader

I disagree - the title is spot on. Groupon's monthly revenue isn't directly related to the personal finances of the founders. The point of the post is to show that a founder's bank going from 5m to 500m doesn't have as much of an effect as it does from 10k to 5m (or 500m).

5m to 500m is actually so inconsequential that they willingly turned down a lucrative acquisition in order to go it alone and make their impact as they see fit.

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> 5m to 500m is actually so inconsequential

It's only inconsequential if you lack imagination.

Would you rather be the guy who started another discount chain, or the guy who made space travel practical?

Agreed. With $5m in the bank you basically never have to work again. Retire early. However you don't really have enough to be a philanthropist or start capital-intensive startups. Could become|continue a serial software startup guy, since no risk to your retirement. You have a nice house and nice car and lots of savings.

With $500m in the bank, you get the above plus you can be a philanthropist and personally fund many sorts of capital-intensive startups. You have a mansion on an island, and a yacht and a helicopter and many exotic cars.

The difference between any two orders of magnitude is never inconsequential, I'd argue. There's always so much more you could do at higher levels. And not necessarily talking about self-ish pleasure-seeking things but world-changing, humanity-improving sorts of things.

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