Hacker News Reader

Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

People wail on Zuckerberg, Gates and Bezos but you have to respect them more than people who inherit and tonne of money and just sit on it or watch it grow on its own...

View on HN

Gates is not a self-made man. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother was on the board of directors at a bank. He was already basically guaranteed to be successful, even without forming Microsoft.

My point is more that if your parents have a few million, and you become the world's richest man, that's a lot more than if your parents are billionares and you become a billionaire...

He built one of the world's largest and most successful companies from the ground floor. That is orders of magnitude greater than just "being successful."

Wasn’t she on the board of IBM?

She served on an executive committee at the United Way with John Opel, the CEO of IBM at the time the PC was being born.

Which is by their own merit, their empires were built from scratch, which I do respect. I find it less respectable if this wealth was immediately inherited and yet they contribute nothing.

Wealth that is 'won' or 'inherited' seems to get spent quicker than if it was 'earned'. Question is, however, is for the former: are they smart enough to make it recurring income.

Microsoft’s first product ever was a port. MS-DOS was literally just someone else’s product, rebranded. Bill Gates’ wealth was built on the backs of many, many people, many of whom he just flat-out screwed over. Microsoft was anti-competitive almost from the very start, that’s why Gates is wealthy, not because he built himself up from nothing.

MS made its money selling Bill's 4K/8K BASIC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC for six years before he bought QDOS/MSDOS

Reply on news.ycombinator.com