patrick.net

Cut this shit out. This is America.

All you need is an idea, $185,000,000, and a lot of hard work, and you can become rich.

thunderlips11 says

Man, I screwed this up. Make that 500 pounds of Yams!

Make that 500 pounds of Face!

HydroCabron says

The ignorance of the L-curve of wealth distribution in this country amazes me. If you make less than $750,000 a year, you're labor or middle-class. You might be acquiring capital rapidly enough to place your children in the capital class, but that means no Audi or BMW for you (well, used maybe).

Income is not wealth.

If you need a paycheck to sustain yourself you're not wealthy regardless of whether you make $75K/year or $750K/year.

If you can live an upper middle class lifestyle (take vacations, dine out, etc. without taking short-cuts in areas like health insurance) without a pay check you're wealthy.

$5M of non-housing assets gets you there supporting a $150K/year draw without the principal growing slower than inflation.

Approaching $10M where you live off just $150K/year puts you in dynastic wealth territory which allows 2 children to do the same, with that $10M growing to $30M in inflation adjusted money over the 20 years which pass between their conception and college graduation leaving $10M for each of you provided that you transfer assets before their value exceeds your gift tax exemption or apply other legal tax reduction strategies. Each successive generation can do the same.

$5M is achievable over a working professional's career and $10M a couple.

Other people being wealthier and the difficulty of getting to the next level (with $100M and $1B reasonable dividing lines) don't change that.

HydroCabron says

Cut this shit out. This is America.

All you need is an idea, $185,000,000, and a lot of hard work, and you can become rich.

Having helped spend $200M of other peoples' money on ideas with one $360M exit where competitors turned about the same ideas into billions I agree with the caveat that iteration on idea and/or market is usually necessary.

The fast path to wealth is coming up with an idea which serves a large addressable market without compelling alternatives, turning it into a company which can grow exponentially, and accelerating that growth using other peoples' money.

Venture capitalists happily part with $10M-$20M of their limited partners' money for a 20% chance at winning with winners averaging 30X returns over a decade. Once you get good growth going they and private equity firms will give you hundreds of millions to grow faster.

Facebooksux says

If Bill Gates, Zuckerburg, Sheyl Sandberg (I can't stand her), Musk, Buffet, Corzine, or any other hyper-wealthy individual from the US grew up as a black kid in amidwestern ghetto, how LIKELY is it that they'd be where they are today?

There are midwestern ghettos?

The lilywhite & male aspect of the web entrepreneur billionaires? If you're a Teabagger it's simple.