Ask News.YC: What would you do if you were a billionaire?
Let's say someone gave you $1 billion tomorrow. After 2 - 3 years of being rich, what do you see yourself doing on a day-to-day basis?
All office space quoting aside, if my startup IPOs I'm buying a winery in Napa, preferably Stags Leap district, and a house in the hills of St. Helena with enough land to let my dogs run free and terrorize the neighbors.
And I'll probably jump into the restaurant industry.
John.
Step Two: Hire a reliable private investigator to ascertain the location of the target: Creed's rehearsal space.
Step Three: Fill the sarcophagus with alligators, poop, and diseased ferrets.
Step Four: Rent several hundred industrial-grade helicopters and lower the sarcophagus onto the target.
Step Five: Construct a monument honoring the heroism of the alligators and diseased ferrets.
I'd throw in another 2bil if you can knock off Maroon 5 and Nickelback at the same time?
Get your people to fax my people.
To cure HIV (idea is Josh's): Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. Introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.
To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.
Here comes the bargain of the century...
How to Knock Off AIDS (for free):
Whether or not you're already infected with HIV:
- eat only healthy foods (limit animal protein, refined carbohydrates, and saturated fat)
- exercise every day
- have a bright outlook
- have meaningful work
- don't smoke or take drugs
- treat others the way you'd like to be treated
- make all your variable names meaningful
And, just in case, if you're not already infected with HIV:
- keep your zipper up (unless you're with your other half)
I'd give it away creatively, always wanted to throw money to the wind in a crowded city street.
That and fund domestic programs to help encourage the success of our next generation of kids.
a.) Physics. Always found it interesting, but not into academia as a way to pay the bills.
b.) Feeling poor compared to those bastards with 11 figure net worths.
I realize I could do these now, but trying to juggle full-time job + part-time startups + current non-profit work + real-life is hard enough already without adding more stuff to it.
But, some amount of time into my aimless wandering, I would no doubt get the itch again, and have to start creating something.
What I would do? Snowboard & learn to surf. Paint.