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Comment by BrendanEich | Hacker News Reader

I was never a millionaire from real estate before I'd been working ten years. Are you perhaps misinformed by someone who was at SGI and exaggerated rumors they heard? I made more off of SGI options than I did by ten years in from real estate, and I never flipped. I've owned the same properties for over 30 years.

I agree with you that many fine people do life-saving or otherwise important work for far less. But facts matter, and I'm here to correct the record.

P.S. I was raised in Pittsburgh and Maryland as much as in the Valley.

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This says you were a millionaire before you'd been working ten years, and as far as I'm aware it's fairly accurate? It's a profile of you that happened long before you were controversial. I didn't claim that you were a millionaire because you had invested in real estate, just that you also had invested in real estate (I assumed that it was obvious that the former was probably a precursor to the latter, but I guess not).

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/09/business/part-artist-part...

It does not say "due to real estate". How hard is this to read accurately and relate on HN faithfully? I had more upside from SGI's IPO than from valley real estate (which was good too, but I never flipped). Yeesh!

It does not say "due to real estate". How hard is this to read accurately and relate on HN faithfully?

Sir, the last comment was stating that I was trying to avoid implying that it was due to real estate.

> I didn't claim that you were a millionaire because you had invested in real estate

> just that you also had invested in real estate

I'm not accusing you of getting rich off of real estate.

I'm just saying that "investing in real estate" is something that requires a substantial volume of money (as you said, a nest egg): it was a way to show that you were well off, not a way to imply you were a slumlord or something.

I misread your comment, sorry. But I must say real estate was cheap in the ‘80s, especially after downturns. Remember the crash of ‘87 aka Black Monday? Yikes, I’m old.

Cool, where in MD? I grew up in Towson and Bel Air.

Gaithersburg.

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