The super wealthy have their own exclusive versions of Amazon, Tinder, Instagram | Hacker News Reader

The super wealthy have their own exclusive versions of Amazon, Tinder, Instagram

cnbc.com

34 pointsthunderbong53 comments

Maybe this is semantic…but I can’t imagine the super wealthy scrolling through James Edition the same way we search on Amazon and then scroll through a bunch of flea market crap and intentionally off-base ads to find what we want. Instead, wouldn’t a super-rich person tell her assistant, “I want a yacht,” and then the assistant would sift through the crap and contact other assistants as a result. And as a result the assistant might tell his boss “well, looks like a good yacht costs $xx million,” and the boss says “oh that’s more than I thought, and then I have to take care of a stupid yacht, forget it, hey book me a luxury cruise, my friend had a good one.”

When I'm a billionaire, I'll still have fun sniffing around Amazon for things I'd like to buy. The only difference is I'll have the money to buy them.

I’m no billionaire, but the more money I make, the less I’m actually interested in buying consumer goods.

Like, I’ll spend a good chunk of money for a nice vacation or a high end restaurant. I like buying Real Estate or spending on investments. Perhaps I’ll get a boat or a really nice car in a couple years. But then what? You’ve kinda run out of stuff to spend on.

I haven't seen anyone else express this, but you're right. All my money is sitting in the bank or investments, and whenever I go to shops or browse online, I keep thinking "eh, one more thing to take up space". I barely buy anything these days, and ask people to give me cheap, thoughtful gifts instead of spending money I either don't need or think is not worth its money.

I wish I could afford to buy a nice house, though. The prices on those are crazy.

that sounds very confident, how come?

Super rich people have children and their kids don’t have executive assistants.

That and some people like doing their own shopping (at least the looking part) because it’s relaxing. Like when you see Oprah buying diamonds in a store when technically she could just ask for someone to do it for her.

You’re not super rich until your kids have assistants.

s/assistants/servants/

you’re not super rich until your kids’ assistants are your assistant’s kids.

no, wait, that’s not rich… that’s something else.

Even moderately wealthy people have executive assistants for their family. That's a thing and definitely far from requiring 1% status.

It's kind of amazing that you think it's not a 1% status to have an assistant like that.

Depends on which 1% we're talking about. I was thinking of the top 1% wealthiest people, which is a very small group. If you are thinking of 1% of the population then that's a bit of a different measure.

1% usually refers to top 1% of all population. So 11M in wealth or 823k income.

Top 5% income is 343k. Which likely in areas they are living don't leave that much room to hire full time personal assistant.

And really in discussion difference between top 1% and top 5% isn't significant.

in the coastal USA and elsewhere, increasing number of "wealthy people" do not form stable relationships and do not make children. Increasing amounts of legal requirements for anyone physically near them, and 24x7 media contact with other, wealthy people far away.. seem more likely. Not everyone likes this - the "no children" part, so for example on the highway from UC Davis into Sacramento state capital, there is a large color ad for "securing your future" which is apparently, for "wealthy" women to freeze their eggs, since they have no time-partner-place to make children now.

Italy, Japan, some USA and some others are following this new pattern, of high-competition people making a lot of money, but the cost is no family, no children.

> For $1,000 a month on Rich Kids, you’re guaranteed to only see photos from other wealthy patrons. Similar to the check marks that denote verified Facebook and Twitter accounts, the app’s prohibitive monthly fee ensures that everyone who uses it is certifiably wealthy.

This is such poor people logic. “Spend money on a cheap thing to prove you’re rich. Btw, that’s my business model.”

I think it’s way more likely that it will be people paying a few grand on their credit card to pretend to be rich and/or golddig.

There is a still a threshold. To even be able to spend 'a few grand' on such things means you have at least that much disposable income, which many many people do not. So you may not necessarily be 'rich', but you are most certainly not 'poor'.

I disagree. There’s a lot of consumer debt.

People go into debt to rent houses and cars just to post instagram photos.

Id say this proves you have at least credit to charge $1,000 or $12,000 for a year.

If I was rich, I would not value such a service that has such a bullshit filter. Especially one they is so easy to scam.

I expect there are real services that have ways to vet members for actual wealth.

I also expect they have PR firms working to stay out of articles like this. But if you want fake rich or people who want to look rich, then you want this kind of PR.

Sounds like you wouldn't use this service regardless of whether you were rich or just had good credit (and neither would I) but that's not the point I was making. It's that having $12k a year (either debit or credit, it doesn't matter) that you don't need to spend on things like food and rent is still a luxury for a great many people. People who would never be able to use this app no matter how much they wanted to. This fee is therefore an effective barrier to entry for a considerable segment of the population as intended.

Or $12k is just a cost of doing business to scam or market. And not a good filter at all.

I’m not against spending $12k/year on luxury items. But I’m against spending $12k/year on pointless things.

There is a bunch of filtered communities for rich/influential people, like yacht clubs, golf clubs, country clubs, wef, etc. Often the main filter is the fact that the communities are not known to others, but of course many have a bunch of filters on top of that. Sometimes that filter is via money, like one cup of tea costing 50€. Sometimes that filter is via something that is distasteful to a large chunk of the population, like say many types of modern art: the fact that many frown at it is often times the point. Sometimes the filter is via requiring specific universities, like various alumni organizations of the ivy league (the main purpose of the ivies is the network, not even the quality of education, as there is many non-ivy schools with similarly good education).

These clubs exist on all sorts of levels of rich people, but the filter does not have to be perfect. All the clients are looking for is a group of people that share relatable stories and problems, and maybe provide business opportunities.

Those filtered communities provide a value though- a marina for your yacht, a good golf course to play on, etc etc.

The issue with this is that they don’t provide any value beyond the filter. So it seems as useful as a yacht club that doesn’t have a marina, it’s just people who claim to have yachts to talk with each other.

Their iOS app got taken down by Apple. I doubt many super rich folk use Android as well. So the user base is probably not optimal.

I was thinking the exclusive version of Amazon was going to be like Amazon but where you don't need to worry about being sent something counterfeit or wade through a ton of crap! James Edition is much less interesting.

Yeah, it's more like Facebook Marketplace, but with yachts instead of fishing boats.

> In 2015, Luxy kicked out 40,000 members for being “too poor, too ugly or both.”

Interesting, it goes against my stereotype: the more wealthy are less likely to discriminate by look (which is associated with low social intelligence).

Maybe the trend reverses when it comes to super-rich? Or maybe it does not even exist?

I think that in general, richer people tend to have better education, therefore also being less likely to discriminate, but if you are super rich (born into a 100-milionare or billionaire) family, you don't need any education and therefore discriminate more.

I don't think education has anything to do with discrimination when it comes to partners, a lot of these rich people have an image to maintain so they probably look for partners who can help maintain this image, this is especially true for the rich people who didn't earn their wealth.

Exactly, a good-looking bf/gf is a status marker.

I don't know for the first one that look legitimate, but the 2 others scream of scamming new riches

1000$ a month is not a lot and doesn’t make someone rich.

Not in itself, no - but for context that's just the subscription fee for a single app ... anyone that's idlely boasting about their lifestyle across several apps and burning N x $12K a year to do so is either rich enough to think nothing of the cost or running a long con.

If you spend $12.000/year purely for personal entertainment then you either have deeply problematic spending habits, are involved in something shady or really are filthy rich.

Plenty of people spend over $12k a year for things that make them feel better (that they don’t need). It’s called a luxury car.

Anyone who bought a new Porsche (and isn’t a professional racing driver using it for work) is probably spending over $12k a year on something for fun.

I assume anyone who buys a new Porsche is indeed rich

A lot of people on HN have Silicon Valley jobs which leads to a distortion field around prices.

That number is almost exactly the median amount of money Americans have left over for spending for "personal entertainment" after all ordinary expenses, per the US government. Americans have anomalously high income generally, not just tech workers.

You don't need to be rich to spend this much on something wasteful, though you may need to be American.

even then, would that half of americans spend the majority of their "personal entertainment" budget on one app?

I'd hope and expect not but Americans do lots of inadvisable things at scale, so it would not surprise me if there is a small sub-population that would. A "small sub-population" can be a lot of people.

If you have an extra $1000 per month laying around that you don’t mind parting with maybe I can send you my PayPal address.

Unless your $1000 a month account is a few years old you will just be ignored.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com