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Comment by firstplacelast | Hacker News Reader

Possibly.

The wealthiest person I ever dated (he wasn't super wealthy while we were together just doing well, but I just saw him a month ago and he was excited because he CAN retire now but doesn't want to - he's 38) spent TONS of money doing rich people things in the pursuit of wealth, he stretched his bank account very thin over and over doing this.

Going to Sundance, Cannes, Burning Man, TED, etc to network. Spending gobs of money on impressing friends and others he wanted to be friends with. Picking up thousand dollar tabs for groups of people then minorly freaking out the next day.

But spend money to make money. Worked for him. And he got to be super self-indulgent along the way.

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How did he make his money, in the end? A talented software developer can make enough money to retire as comfortable middle class by 38, by getting a job at a FAANG by age 25.

The thought of going to Burning Man for millionaire-business networking makes me sick, the quintessence of how Silicon Valley tech bros are murdering human culture.

Perhaps that's one reason these events exist - FAANG and start-up schmooze fests sweetened with a sprinkling of cultural sugar frosting.

Also, data point of one. Sometimes faking it doesn't work out so well.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/09/anna-sorokin...

Of course that's the far side of the line - someone with no real income at all. But if your networking expenses are regularly on the far side of your income and you don't have some kind of track record to prove to yourself you can make the networking work, you're playing some very high stakes poker.

He raised money for start-ups and was a marketing consultant. Ended up on advisory boards for various start-ups and most recently as a CXO for a prominent start-up (which got tons of traction but ultimately went down in flames). He had his hand in a bunch of different companies and often worked for equity and a small fee.

And as smart as the guy is in many respects (language, social skills, etc), he is a dumb-dumb when it comes to technical anything or analysis of any type of market/business. But holy fuck, that guy can sell anything (most especially himself - was a fascinating person to watch).

That’s an interesting anecdote because most wealth building strategies don’t really discuss the value and cost of networking.

[This might sound cynical.]

That's because it's a dirty secret. Most people selling you wealth building strategies are loathe to openly talk about how so much of it is based on "who you know" more so than "what you know". They might touch upon it incidentally in the course of their spiel, but it's either glossed over, or they don't have the level of insight/self-reflection needed to be able to articulate the value and cost (and indeed the pathways and mechanisms) of networking.

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