How to Make a Million Dollars | Hacker News Reader

How to Make a Million Dollars

marshallbrain.com

68 pointsmarcofloriano32 comments

This was a good quote:

"All you can do after a failure is get up and try again. If you keep doing that, one of two things will happen -- either you will succeed eventually, or you will die. And if you die, then you won't care anymore."

In America, starting a successful business is the surest, most controllable path available to you for making a million dollars in less than 42 years.

Sadly, this is just not true. Getting a high paying job (doctor, lawyer, MBA, programmer) and living well below your means is the easiest way.

There are lots of great reasons to start your own business, but they are not because it is "sure" and "controllable."

The easiest way is to simply find a way to make one dollar (anyone can make one lousy dollar), find a way to automate that (hire people, code something, yadda), and repeat a million times (assuming the original process is scalable).

Simple, and effective.

That sounds far from simple and totally ineffective. Finding a way to make $1 that scales to that extent is non-trivial, in fact it is probably harder than opening a successful restaurant.

Hiring people is out unless it could be repeated quickly (they charge an hourly rate that you have to fade) and if that's true, the minute you show someone how to do it they'll cut you out. Unless there is a barrier to entry, which generally means cost, in which case you probably already have a million dollars.

Maybe the trick is to get people to make you money without them knowing that they are working for you. What if freerice.com was for profit?

None of those steps are actually 'non-trivial'. My statement was meant to be sort of tongue-in-cheek. It's a true statement. It's also a gross over simplification.

This method has worked for me in the past, especially on the internet. Outside the internet however it's virtually impossible due to fundamental market restrictions.

Have you been able to do it? Not necessarily achieving 1M, but at least a 5 figure return over one year.

Sort of. I built the business, but it got litigated away from me. Last valuation of it though was several million dollars.

Now I'm starting over, and I'll do it again.

Can you give a bit more details please. How much did you make per sale? How did you automate it? How was traction etc...?

> The whole point of creating a successful business, of course, is to have it generate money.

I like to think that the whole point is to make something awesome/memorable/useful/meaningful/worthwhile that also creates jobs and produces wealth.

awesome/memorable/useful/meaningful/worthwhile

Nice thought, but that definition is so broad that only outright scams don't fall under its purview.

It's not the retrospective assessment of a business that's important here but the motivation that sets it in motion in the first place. Take a company like Facebook: those guys are really serious--almost evangelical--about the goal of making the world more connected; they also happen to be cornering a Google-size market in the process. Or think back to Microsoft before hating on them became so vogue: they had a mission to put a PC in every household which is a pretty admirable goal; it also happened to be the case that it was a damn good business move.

Agreed, just pointing out that almost any business can be started to fulfill one of the goals you pointed out, especially useful and memorable, from a corner store to a trash collection company to a collections agency. It's useful to someone :)

It was thin, but the one gem that you don't hear very often is to approach being an employee as a way to learn how to successfully run a business, rather than a way to get a paycheck. Sound advice for entrepreneurs who, for whatever reason, can't yet take the plunge.

> approach being an employee as a way to learn how to successfully run a business

Or as is so often the case (and also a valuable learning experience) how to unsuccessfully run a business.

Some day I will also have a million dollars. Then I'll write a guide on how to make a million dollars as well.

i was going to summarize, but it's thin and we've heard it all before: work hard, solve a problem, etc.

I find it sad commentary on the state of our educational system that this might be news to the average student at Duke.

Most people know about the "work hard" part, but they try it within the system as employees. They somehow trust the system to reward them, if only they work hard enough. I think that is a part where education is still necessary, because I don't think the system really works for you.

Yes it was thin, but it was pitched at college kids who may not have heard it before. Many of us got way past college before we read any of this stuff, regrettably.

It may be thin, but it's inspirational, and that can go a long way when you're starting something from scratch.

This post inspired me years ago when I was starting my own company and I still think about it today.

Thanks Marshall!

etc includes: pander to the young college crowd that's playing a ton of video games.

You say "Steve, how can I be a millionaire and never pay taxes?" First, get a million dollars. Now you say "Steve, what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, 'You have never paid taxes'?"

Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot."

Is that a quote from something?

I remember back in grade school when I asked my Mom what the penalty for not paying taxes was "Do they take you to jail or something?", and this simple fact dawned on me and me mother simultaneously.

It's an old Steve Martin bit.

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77imono.phtml

(Video of it is a bit hard to track down, sorry)

If I had a million dollars I think I would hire a graphic designer to craft me a presentation template that did not look like it came from the ass of PowerPoint, ca. 1998.

Otherwise, good slideshow :-)

Actually, this presentation has been around for a while. I remember reading this around 2005.

Not exactly 1998, but still :P

(http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.marshallbrain.com/mi...)

Say I'm a college student with $70,000 available at this very moment with a networth of around $150,000, with zero debt. How would you turn it into a million? Hypothetically speaking.

Start a business become a millionaire. It's like saying to a VC we just need to capture 1% of this $100 billion market.

sure it's easy to create a business, but that just means there is more competition. For every Walmart, there were thousands of mom and pop stores that crashed and burned.

Borrow money from the FED. Buy a gold futures. Sell them next week. =)

i stopped reading at 10% for 42 years

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