Ask YC: how many of you want to be rich? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: how many of you want to be rich?

15 pointsbrosephius22 comments

I know everyone says that to succeed as an entrepreneur you have to do it because it's what you love, not because you seek monetary wealth. I agree, to the extent that doing it because you love it has to be your primary motivator. but I also see nothing wrong with wanting to be rich, as long as you recognize it's a side effect of a very successful business. yet I feel like this sort of brazen aspiration is stigmatized. I know that a multi-million dollar payday or billion dollar valuation is a huge long shot, but to me shooting for it is part of the excitement of creating a business.

does anyone here consciously want to make millions? is some degree of megalomania an asset in the tech startup world?

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I think we'd be naive to assume money is not a strong motivator in entrepreneurship. It may even be a primary motivator for some, though few would admit it. That said, it can't be the only motivator. Not because that's morally repugnant or anything (I don't make moral judgments here), but because it's not a realistic or sustainable source of motivation.

If all you want to do is make money, then you would be foolish to pursue entrepreneurship. Your expected return on starting a company is significantly less than your expected return on doing something like investment banking. Sure, you might strike it super-rich and become a billionaire through entrepreneurship. More likely than not, that ain't gonna happen. Conversely, you can almost guarantee yourself a fortune in the millions to tens of millions (and maybe even hundreds of millions) if you bust your ass in high finance and are great at it.

In summation: How many of us want to get rich? Probably most of us. How many are doing this solely to get rich? Only the silly ones.

For me, I am not motivated by money but rather motivated by the things I can continue to create with larger sums of it. I am a creator, inventor by nature... I've done it all my life.

Having the money to sort out the pithy details of day-to-day life like food, shelter, etc. and simultaneously funding my insane garage projects I embark upon constantly is a nice-to-have but not an expectation.

Really, in the end, I just want to build a legion of robotic minions.

I want money to do 2 things:

  1. Travel, anytime, anywhere.

  2. Limitless ability to create new projects and businesses.

Fancy cars and houses? No thanks. I hate "stuff".

Amen to that

does anyone here consciously want to make millions?

Count me in.

is some degree of megalomania an asset in the tech startup world?

Muwahahahahaha. Damn right.

but I also see nothing wrong with wanting to be rich, as long as you recognize it's a side effect of a very successful business.

Exactly. Profit is just a way of keeping score... but the point of a business - IMO - is to achieve some end, which might or might not be as simple as "get rich." I just read Jim Collins' book "Built to Last" and he goes into a lot of depth about how important it is to build a company around a set of core values... to, as he puts it "build a clock, not just tell time." Good stuff.

As someone who has had a very variable income during her adult life (by a factor of 10x), I can't say I was much happier making a ton of money. In fact, I did it all wrong, and I was pretty miserable at times.

After a certain income level, I prefer to exchange money for free time. At this point in my life, I just sort of naturally live the Millionaire Next Door lifestyle, and there's only so many Chipotle meals and Threadless t-shirts I want to buy.

I learned the hard way (lots of dollars spent) that I prefer choosing my own projects, schedule, and interests to flying first class and buying designer clothes. It turns out that spending a lot of money is very stressful and empty for me. I was always worried about getting my money's worth and dismayed that nothing was as cool as I expected.

Some might just be personality? I think many hackers have a cultural disconnect with the traditional aspirations of wealth, because many of their/our aspirations are hacking-related rather than wealth-related. What would I do if I could do whatever I want? I'm not personally very excited by the possibility of staying in 5-star hotels, drinking expensive wine, owning a yacht, having a big mansion, etc., so those aren't really goals. I am excited by the possibility of being able to work for extended periods of time on my own projects without worrying about their profitability though. So that's getting-rich aspiration in a sense, in that I want enough money in the bank to bankroll 20+ years of carefree hackery, which is actually quite a bit of money.

I'm not sure if it counts for your question, though. In a sense you could say that I don't aim to "be rich" in a qualitative sense, but to "be middle class for a long time without working". And you may be asking why more people don't aspire to be rich in that qualitative sense? On the other hand, a person who can live a middle-class lifestyle for an extended time without working is objectively pretty rich...

I'm with you - I want to bank roll 20 years of doing whatever I want to do as well but I just can't find the motivation to do the day-to-day for the payoff that would come so late in life. I'm afraid the part of my life that matters (my prime years basically) most will be gone before I'm even ready to relax.

I'm ambivalent about wanting to make millions. I believe very firmly that money per se doesn't solve problems and can compound them. (I have heard that two thirds of folks who win the lottery are bankrupt within five years and some of them have bad things happen because they are suddenly rich.) But I and my oldest son have a medical condition that can cost millions over the course of one's life and we have basically gotten well at a fraction of the price it usually costs to keep people like us limping along. So I suspect that once all the fall out from that is fully resolved, I may have the potential to make millions.

My concern isn't so much how much wealth I have (after achieving a certain level of security), but making sure it doesn't screw up my life. I think at times about the American fantasy of winning the lottery and I suspect that would wreak havoc with my life whereas earning it shouldn't have the same kind of impact. One problem with winning it is that it suddenly and irrevocably cuts a lot of your social ties -- for example, people typically leave their jobs promptly and often don't have any real plans other than to party hardy with their newfound wealth. But earning it usually involves building solid social ties: Relationships to the business community, to your customers, to your employees/coworkers/cofounders, and so on. I think when people have too much aimless time on their hands and too little in the way of healthy social ties, it tends to lead to bad things. A lot of people seem to desperately want to win money because they have unhealthy/unhappy social ties they wish they could escape (like their job) but the reality is that money by itself doesn't usually resolve personal problems. So being able to show up at work one day and tell your boss "Fuck you" to his/her face doesn't necessarily lead to the freedom and peacefulness that such people likely are envisioning.

As contrived as it sounds, I've found that my desire to make more money has been as a score keeper. Something that drives my competitive edge.

The same reason I like looking at traffic stats, and income stats. More traffic, more money -> winning more. It's just a form or manifestation of internal motivation.

I make plenty of money now, but I still have a desperate need to grow/expand.

I think I am in the minority in that I don't really care about being rich in the 'have millions of dollars' sense.

I am lazy and hate to do have to do things to maintain my life.

People don't build social apps because they love chatrooms and twitter feeds, they build them because they like the thrill of being successful and getting paid.

If I had a steady income stream of 50k a year (adjusted for inflation over time) I would probably never try and make money.. I'd spend my time surfing and disc golfing and writing fibonnaci generators in the shakespeare programming language.

However, that's not the case. Instead I am happy with the compromise of trading my time for rates that I would have considered absurdly high just a couple years ago while making low effort hail mary's at passive income streams.

"I am lazy and hate to do have to do things to maintain my life." Haha! I thought I was the only one... I agreed with you til your last sentence. I'm a fan of minimalist living and so I've made it work for me. I haven't really had to make that same compromise you're talking about just yet.

For me, it's become a -- perhaps counter-productive -- defense mechanism.

Expensive things don't bring me much pleasure. But, once you've had a significant illness or other setback, you learn that money can be the difference between quality of life and being screwed over. (Though it's no guarantee -- there are vampires who are good at taking advantage of the well-endowed.)

Secondly, I'd prefer to live where I can ensure I don't have to listen to my neighbors at all hours, depending on the luck of the draw.

P.S. I like _delirium's response, as well. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2423741

My goals are long term. Right now, I know how to do things related to the web very well. My long term goal is to parlay that into a fortune to pursue my second ambition: space.

Namely, the first space elevator.

PG has said repeatedly and publicly that he did Viaweb to get rich.

It's bad PR to talk about getting rich, that's why people rarely do it.

Of Course people want to be rich. On the contrary,for the people that use that entity as the primary motivator for entrepreneurship, they will get burnt out. Doing something for the love and the passion is the greatest thing. Having said that, being passionate about your work and becoming rich from it is not a bad option.

I just want to be happy, man. If I wake up in the morning and hate what I'm about to do then I'll feel miserable. I don't think money can really undo that feeling. I may be unhappy for not having money to do the things I want to do but at least I won't be miserable.

I want enough money to follow the advice that Warren Buffet gave: "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing."

I don't think that requires a million dollar payday.

I'm not in YC, but I like enough money that I don't have to worry about money (bills, mortgage, simple pleasures). I don't desire a Ferrari and whatnot (but I see nothing wrong, if you do).

Would I accept if someone offered to pay me that kind of money? Sure. Would I take up a line of work I hate to earn it? No, thanks. I work to live, not the other way around.

I do, I don't see anything wrong with it. I like stuff. I like not having to ask permission to do audacious things.

I think $100M is the low bar for me.

Already rich, I have a wonderful family, and an enjoyable life.

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