
How To Become a Millionaire In Three Years - jasonlbaptiste
http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/how-to-become-a-millionaire-in-three-years/
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patio11
Just a quick semi-meta comment: if you have a comment which you put a lot of
time into and which resonated with people, strongly consider blowing it up
into a blog post. It may be irrational, but the perceived authority of 500
words wrapped in an attractive Wordpress template murders the perceived
authority of 500 words appearing at the third level of indentation on this
page.

I like to think that I've written some fairly useful stuff here over the last
year or so. To the best of my knowledge, none of my comments has ever gone to
Slashdot and the New York Times, but the comment that I turned into a blog
post about programmers and names just did.

Your own blog is also a little easier to cite in resume-type situations.
(Hypothetically assuming I were to seek funding, I have at least one HN
comment that I'd point to to say "Read this, it is strongly indicative of the
future success of the business you are about to invest in", and that is a
little quirky.)

~~~
Sukotto
Another meta comment: Let me start by saying I do not think you have
deliberately abused the HN point system. You already have a high score and
presumably don't care about the number growing.

That being said... this is an interesting way to game one's HN score.

Comment on stories. Once it became obvious that a particular comment is
popular/well-received (200+ points) clarify it a bit and post it to your blog.
Then submit it as a story back to HN and get another (200+ points).

I found your original comment really interesting and the formatting on your
blog way easier on the eyes than HN comments so I'm not complaining or
anything.... just thought it an interesting (and inadvertent) example of how
to abuse the HN point system.

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jasonlbaptiste
I don't care about Karma at this point in the same way people with lots of
money don't care about money (that right there is a potential post). I'd
rather not lose it because that means I've done something bad/not smart.
Otherwise gaining karma isn't something I keep track of. My logic was:

a) I wrote the comment randomly on a Sunday night. I literally wrote what was
on my mind. I kept updating it frequently as I thought of more things.

b) All of a sudden there were 200+ upvotes the next day. To me that indicated
that people found the comment really useful.

c) I had more to say, wanted to polish it up, and put it on my blog in a more
permanent place.

d) Submitted it since it was previously proven to be useful.

~~~
davidw
I'd kind of like a way to sell some of it off, or have pg fly my family on an
all-expenses paid vacation to the Bahamas or something. Fact is, though, it's
completely useless.

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pragmatic
Are you in fact a millionaire?

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edw519
Excellent point.

On the other hand, I know plenty of millionaires who never could have made a
post like Jason's.

Why? Because of how they became millionaires. Either they inherited, joined a
family business, climbed the corporate ladder, held onto or flipped real
estate, grew a conventional business in the perfect climate, or just got plain
lucky.

Better: Have you earned a million dollars through your own start-up > once?

~~~
jseliger
Most people don't become millionaires through inheritance, extreme income, and
so forth; they become millionaires because they save more than they spend,
usually by a substantial amount, invest widely, buy a house and keep it, and
marry and don't get divorced. Stanley and Danko's book _The Millionaire Next
Door_ describes this phenomenon: [http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-
Thomas-Stanley/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-
Stanley/dp/0671015206/ref=thstsst-20) and what wealth in America actually
looks like.

~~~
kiba
That's a _slow_ way of becoming a millionaire. People want to become
millionaire the fast way.

It's still hard work though. However, you can probably combine the advice in
that book and speed up the process of becoming a millionaire.

Once you get to that, I think you can live off a 3 percent interest. That's
30,000 dollars. I am pretty sure you can manage that if you live like a
college student.

~~~
GFischer
30.000 dollars is enough for middle-class living in the Third world :)

I'd spend part of the capital though, or invest on something with a better
interest rate (like living off real-estate rent - my grandparents do that).

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jasonlbaptiste
Added some things, cleaned up a tiny bit, and made permanent this comment
which people found useful last night:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447428> Update: seems mediatemple is
going schizo, so if things are loading slow, I apologize. They usually run
smooth at this level of traffic.

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jasonlotito
Thanks for editing your comment and posting it. It's much nicer to read.
And...

> Raise Revenue, Not Funding

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

> Look For Something That Is Required Or Subsidized By Law

I'd like to add that you should be careful about something that requires you
to need constant permission from a third party. The iPhone market is a good
example. While I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't develop for that market,
you just need to be aware that whatever you do, your success depends on
someone besides you or your potential customer saying "Yes."

~~~
nlh
VERY good point. I call this the "fallacy of control" ...

Basically, don't forget who controls the product/service/platform you're
trying to build for or sell. The prime example of this is Pandora's epic
journey through the annals of the music industry. Brilliant idea, brilliant
execution, but almost didn't make it because they didn't actually have any
control over the product they were selling (other peoples' music).

I've seen lots of companies start and fail trying to do similar things --
music, movies, TV shows, etc. So many ideas can be so simple ... "we'll create
this awesome service that lets you pick your song and XYZ"

Or, more simply put: Be in control of your own supply chain.

~~~
jasonlotito
> Fallacy of Control

I like this. I'm going to steal it for my own personal use in later
conversations, where I will forget to credit it to you, Mr/Mrs NLH.

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koeselitz
I think this is a really useful article, and honestly the advice sounds like
good and rational advice. So I hope it's clearly that I'm genuinely not
snarking when I say this:

Why would one want to be a millionaire?

This isn't to say that there's no reason to try. It's only to say that most
people don't think about how much it _costs_ to become a millionaire. Maybe
some things are just worth more...

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rodh257
Hi Jason,

Great post, but just thought I'd mention I went searching for the RSS button
on your site and couldn't find it anywhere (in fact, I subscribed to the
comments on that post in my reader before I realized it was the wrong feed).

I could be blind, but in the end I noticed it was Wordpress so went to /rss/
to subscribe. Just thought I'd let you know!

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kingkawn
Do something that makes $333,333.33 a year.

~~~
JacobAldridge
And end up a penny short. Oh, the disappointment.

~~~
kingkawn
gotta keep something to strive for.

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yewweitan
Why do Projections always try to be linear?
:[http://scrivle.com/2010/06/22/why-do-projections-try-to-
be-l...](http://scrivle.com/2010/06/22/why-do-projections-try-to-be-linear/)

~~~
pmichaud
Because no one is any good at math.

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nir
Once I saw an article on "How to Get a Rich Girl" one of these Maxim type
magazines. I wonder if there were actually people reading it and thinking
"yeah, I'm gonna read this and get me a rich chick!"

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0nly1ife
> If it’s a mass market “trend” that’s all over the news, it’s too late

If someone thinks it is a good idea, you are too late. - Yvon Chouinard

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theprodigy
Jason is for sure not a millionaire, but in his article he just outlines some
good tips on how to identify an opportunity.

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GavinB
I'm getting "No Results Found. The page you requested could not be found. Try
refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post."

It seems appropriate.

Though I suppose every millionaire became a millionaire in three years, if you
only start counting from three years before they became a millionaire.

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ww520
I am, mostly through saving and real estate investment.

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sourc3
Would you still follow the same strategy in the current real-estate market?

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ComputerGuru
Please don't take this wrong way, but: GAAAH my eyes!

The text is way too big, the margins way too wide, and the letters way too
run-together.

(Readability ftw!)

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
No no, I won't. I tried optimizing the blog for the iPad a few weeks back. It
works great there, but it's not the best for the actual computer. I'm going to
scrap the current design and go with something fresher now that I'm writing
more often. The iPad formatting? More on that later...

~~~
ComputerGuru
Thanks for your reply. Can't you detect if it's an iPad and use a different
stylesheet or is that not possible? (don't know - I'm a mac user, but I'm not
sold on the iPad).

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
You can certainly detect the user agent. Working on something a bit more in-
depth than that though :).

I'd say go for it, but it really depends person to person. It's not perfect
for everyone.

~~~
mikeklaas
There are CSS expressions to use to send certain rules to ipads; no user-agent
sniffing required.

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babyboy808
From the person who asked this question on HN, I thank you Jason for making
this blog post.

All the best!

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yanilkr
I have a brilliant idea, But for this to work, one has to be a billionaire.

~~~
zandorg
Get on the phone with Michael Milken and raise a few $100 million by selling
junk bonds to eager investors if your idea is high-growth (note: he's banned
from the industry but it's how a few billionaires got started).

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paolomaffei
I'm not asking about being digg proof, but not even HN proof?

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phoenix24
can't access the article, seems to have been removed/deleted ?

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ddemchuk
Your font isn't very easy on the eyes...drop it down a few notches in size

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
agreed. Will update it later when mediatemple is more stable. thanks for the
feedback.

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gbk
so reposting people's comments as new content for your blog?

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jasonlbaptiste
It's actually my comment.

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ismarc
And one that gains a lot from formatting beyond what HN provides. I was only
able to skim the comment last night, but was able to sit and read the entire
blog post with improved formatting.

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nearestneighbor
> Smart people whom are successful usually got there by doing the same and
> have an innate desire to help those do the same.

Most smart people know not to overuse the dative form.

~~~
zackattack
There's no need to be obnoxious, you can just tell him that he should have
used who instead of whom. If you wanted to be extra neighborly, you could have
provided a cool rule of thumb for gauging when to use which, suggest as "Try
substituting him or he; him corresponds with whom whereas he corresponds with
who."

