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Comment by kirbyk | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg was offered $1 billion dollars from Yahoo. After offered the money Mark and Peter Thiel (investor) had a talk about the offer. Marks comment was "obviously we're not going to sell here." Peter didn't feel the same way. Today Peter is very grateful Mark didn't sell. Mark had a vision for FB that Yahoo didn't, and he knew that if he sold he would never see his vision come true.

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It's pretty incredible. I can't imagine many 22 year olds turning down one hundred million, let alone one billion.

If you're driven and have a clear vision, it seems less unlikely. If you're just building things for the sake of building things because you like to build things, that's a little bit different.

I actually think it's the other way around. When you're 22 it doesn't take a lot of money to feel like "man, I already have all the money I could ever need." You're living cheap, you're probably single, you're probably healthy, you're probably not thinking too hard about retirement. So money's not as big a pressure point in your life as it is when you're (say) 42, with a house payment and two kids you want to send to college someday and an underperforming 401(k). When you've got those worries, I have to think it would be harder to turn away $100mm in hopes of making a billion later on.

So true, 22 yo don't have wives who will skin them off if they reject that much money :)

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