
To Get Rich, Just Follow the Instructions - maurycy
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/24513
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strlen
It's definitely true, but most important is the last paragraph at the end. The
best example is building enterprise vs. consumer applications.

If you'd like a safe way to get rich off a start-up, creating a consulting gig
doing something "enterprisey" and then morph it into a start-up. In 5-7 years
that could mean wealth. But this also means you'll be coding Java/.NET all of
that time and are never going to build the next google.

What you would build is something like the next Siebel: worse than what the
open source community provides, but some suit somewhere will justify spending
$1 mill on it as a "business decision".

~~~
donw
I would advocate against going against the 'Enterprise' route, unless you
already have contacts that can feed you your first few clients. Getting
contracts at the sorts of companies that buy 'enterprise' systems is much more
a matter of being connected than software quality. This should not come as a
surprise. Taking a million-dollar wager on an unknown is corporate suicide. A
million-dollar contract with an established partner that goes tango-uniform is
just a 'bad call'.

~~~
strlen
You need contacts, but you don't need to market your business (or hope your
business becomes viral). You can get contacts by starting off doing consulting
work. You'd only need to hire (or have as a co-founder) a business/sales
person, you won't need to hire a marketing person.

Nor do you begin with million dollar deals, first customers can be cheaper,
just to establish a clientèle base/relationships. The fact you said it's a
matter of contacts vs. software quality is a point I forgot to mention: as Ben
Stein said, you don't need to be great to do this. You just need to follow
directions.

pg makes the same recommendation (go into enterprise) for those who do not
think they are smart or driven enough to build consumer web applications.

~~~
bigbang
"pg makes the same recommendation (go into enterprise) for those who do not
think they are smart or driven enough to build consumer web applications."
what makes u think that enterprise stuff doesnt need smartness? vmware?
oracle? fwiw, ppl go where the money is and/or where the barrier is low, not
where its smarter. for enterprise barrier is too high to get customers or even
your customers are evry limited and you have to spend lots of time building
your product unlike in web where there are lots of "platforms" like
ror,adsense etc etc.

~~~
nostrademons
A bunch of my friends were early VMWare customers (1999/2000). They were
almost totally a consumer/small business company then. VMWare Workstation was
their first product, and they only got into server virtualization and
enterprise solutions after the dot-com recovery, when folks realized "Hey, our
servers are sitting idle most of the time, let's put a bunch of additional
virtual servers on it."

They've followed the path of many, many other successful disruptive
innovations. They come out with something that's innovative & technically
hard, release it as a low-margin consumer product, and then gradually move up-
margin into enterprise systems as their product gets better & more widely
known.

------
henning
Ever since Ben Stein got into the business of spewing creationist claptrap in
phony "documentaries", my respect for him and willingness to consider his
opinions has dropped tremendously.

~~~
tom_rath
Nice people can be idiots and assholes can be wise. Sometimes it pays to
listen to those you dislike.

It's a shame Ben Stein turns his brain off when his faith is questioned, but
if blind belief in the sky elf is enough to turn you off someone's writing
you'll miss out on a lot of good stuff.

~~~
henning
There is more good writing than there is time to read, so I have the luxury of
choosing not to listen to people like him.

~~~
tom_rath
That you do, but you're missing out on some pretty sound financial and
business advice when you pass his columns by.

~~~
pepeto
I don't see 1 thing I would have missed if I never stumbled on this article.
This guy is so far from being rich it just pity looking at guys making fun of
themselves.

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jkush
Well, that's great advice...when you have instructions to read.

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Flemlord
"Read the instructions." I'll add this to my other helpful HN startup advice
like "only work four days a week" and "take more vacations".

------
Harkins
OK, so let's say Yanik has no costs at all -- he gets to take that entire
$300,000 and put it right in his own pocket. Maybe lumber and concrete just
fall out of the sky for him, and people work for him free because he's such a
nice guy who'll help you with his stereo.

But Yanik is selling his time, he's getting $300k for the time it takes him to
manage a building's construction. Stein says he's "well on his way to being in
the top 1 percent and, after that, the top one-tenth of 1 percent." Absolutely
false.

Let's say Yanik can put up not one but _three_ $300k buildings a year, because
he's so talented. Great, he'll be a billionaire in just 1,111 years.

The wealthiest 1% of America isn't just a little ahead of the rest of us; as
Stein correctly notes they're hugely ahead. It doesn't happen by trying harder
at your job but by redefining the work, putting capital to work for you
instead of going to work yourself.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
bingo. renting your labor has always been the least efficient way to make
money. more efficient is renting your land, more efficient than that is
renting your capital.

------
icey
It's decent enough advice, but I have a hard time taking any scientific advice
from someone who doesn't even believe in evolution.

~~~
yters
In terms of a minimal theoretic definition, ID is used by many professional
disciplines today, since all it says is that intelligence can be detected.
This comes up in any discipline that deals with human intent, such as
forensics and law, signal processing, web search, spam filters, etc.

ID as a scientific methodology merely says we shouldn't arbitrarily limit
where we can look for intelligence. The only reason we currently have this
limit is because of purposeful cultural transformations (see "Closing of the
American Mind") and not because of any rigorous arguments or evidence.

Also, it needs to be said that ID vs evolution is a false dichotomy.

~~~
yters
Downmodder, could you point out where I am wrong, along with support? It'd be
a help for me, since the above makes the most sense to me.

