
Fuck you, Money - antongm
http://adgrok.com/fuck-you-money
======
kscaldef
I have to say, I nearly threw this article across the proverbial room after
reading the second paragraph:

> Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your
> wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational
> consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most
> existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a
> good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now?

I'm sorry, but that's just offensive. The fact that you can't imagine a "wage-
slave" contemplating these questions is probably closely linked to why you
can't imagine a successful startup founder getting off the treadmill either.
If you were willing to take your $4.2M or whatever and be happy, you'd also be
able to understand that you can live a good life without that kind of money
too. (Free hint: it's not the 48-inch TV that makes your life fulfilling.)

~~~
scott_s
I think perhaps you're interpreting what he wrote too harshly.

I took it to mean that once you have FU money, you _have to_ confront these
questions because there's nothing left for you to worry about. Much of our
time and mental effort is spent dealing with and worrying about survival. (Not
survival in the hunter-gatherer sense, but making sure you have enough money
in the next few days/weeks/months/years to live on.) When you worry about that
every day, it's easier to not think about the big stuff. When only the big
stuff is left, it's hard not to think about it.

~~~
nostrademons
What technology worker spends all day worrying about survival? It's not hard
to save up a couple years living expenses on a software engineer salary, and
it's not hard to find another job (or even found a successful company) if you
have a couple years to do it.

~~~
scott_s
Many people with wage-based jobs adjust their lifestyle so that they're always
living, roughly, paycheck to paycheck. Also, I tried to get across that I mean
survival in the sense of "What do I need to do in the short and long term to
make sure I can get by?"

~~~
Retric
I have found my spending has decreased as my salary has increased. Granted, I
have not gotten any major pay bumps in the last few years, but having bought a
lot of the things I wanted to buy and I don't need to keep spending money
getting a better version of the same thing. But, it's more than just stuff,
spending 60$ at a restaurant is fun the first few times, but after a while
there is little novelty in it. You also build up equity, I went from an 18
year old car 100$ trade in value to buy a new one and now that my new car is
almost paid off I don't see a reason to replace it anytime soon or get an
upgrade with my car “equity”.

PS: IMO, unless you have children there is little stopping the average
developer from retiring at 45.

------
apu
I think these guys might be the best trolls I've ever seen on the web. First
the NY Sucks article, and now this.

Everything from the title, to the giant fuck you to "wage slaves" in the 2nd
paragraph, to the fuck you to investors in the 4th paragraph to the fuck you
to the Goldman folks later on, screams, "I'M GOING TO PISS YOU OFF SO YOU PAY
ATTENTION TO ME."

Bravo!

Might I suggest a topic for your next essay? "Are you a creative type? FUCK
YOU! Non-creative type? FUCK YOU, TOO!"

~~~
quickpost
Agreed. He even admits as much in one of the essays he linked to:

"What’s work like now? Writing code. Worrying about everything from our credit
card billing to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink that will give us all
diptheria some day. Writing linkbait blog posts to get us free PR (like the
one you’re reading now)."

[http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-
with-z...](http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-zero-
revenue-is-better-than-working-for-goldman-sachs)

------
frossie
_the reality is you’re doomed if you’re even asking yourself the question. You
know what I think? I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million,
then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million._

I'm not sure the OP has grasped the complete psychology of FU money. Surely
the value of FU money is not to allow one to stop working, it is in the
emotional pay-off for the security it represents. This is a big deal,
especially for people who, for example, experienced financial insecurity as
children. I am guessing there are also tangible social benefits to reaching
that stage, even if you changed nothing in your life upon achieving it.

~~~
jdietrich
In the world of high-stakes poker, it is commonly understood that the only way
to make a million dollars playing poker is not to want to make a million
dollars. If you care about the money, your lizard brain takes over and stops
you from taking the risks you need to take. As soon as you see the chips on
the table as dollar bills, you're finished. Practically the definition of
greatness in poker is the ability to play the same for pennies as you would
for millions - as far as the great players are concerned, it's not really
money, it's just how you keep score.

I think the OP is making a similar argument about startup founders - if you're
emotionally invested in the payoff, your ability to make the right decisions
will be impaired. You'll choose smaller markets, less ambitious products, make
safer design decisions. You think too much about making money and not enough
about growing a business. I think it's no coincidence that the likes of Page
and Brin and Zuckerberg never really intended to start businesses. I think
it's no accident that Warren Buffett still drives an old Cadillac and lives in
his old suburban house.

~~~
revorad
_I think it's no coincidence that the likes of Page and Brin and Zuckerberg
never really intended to start businesses. I think it's no accident that
Warren Buffett still drives an old Cadillac and lives in his old suburban
house._

I can think of a few counter-examples - Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Felix Dennis.

~~~
enjo
There are a lot of examples on an even much larger scale. I know two folks who
have sold businesses and now live in Hawaii doing practically nothing. It's
really not that uncommon. It's just that those folks fade into memory while
the workaholics continue to work and increase in overall profile.

It really feels a lot like the 90 hour work week insanity of the tech boom.
For years after that I encountered business-types who would enthusiastically
tell me during interviews that they're "the type of company where developers
keep a sleeping bag under their desk". Apparently that's the key to success,
except that very few of the startups I've encountered actually operate that
way.

~~~
nostrademons
A bunch of startups that I've encountered operate that way, but there seems to
be a strong negative correlation between sleeping at the office and the
eventual success of the startup. The ones I know that _succeed_ work hard,
often 9-10 hour days, but their employees have weekends and aren't at the
office all night long.

------
nostromo
Interestingly I find a similar drive within myself. Many years ago I told
myself I'd start a business when I had $10k in hand. Then it became $20k, then
$50k, then $100k, now it's more...

Of course I realize that there's no good time to leave a good job -- just like
there's no good time to have a baby. It's a moving target -- and if you want
to do something, you just have to jump the nest and do it.

Because our minds work on a relative basis ("I make good money but he makes
more") and because our dopamine payoff from money is never as good as we
anticipate it to be ("no, winning the lottery will not make you happier"), it
makes sense that more is never enough.

~~~
nostrademons
I try to frame it in terms of skills learned: "I'll start my next company when
I've learned X and Y and tangibly accomplished Z." This is also a moving
target, but at least it takes effort to move the goalposts, in the form of
figuring out what your next goal is. At that point, you have to think about it
anyway, so if the rational choice is "It's time to leave and start my company
now," that should at least enter into your mind.

------
krschultz
"Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of
48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions
in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing
me to do anything, so what do I do now?"

Actually long before the point of becoming a startup founder and possibly
making to "fuck you money", you can ask that question.

Other options prior to "fuck you money" that I've considered, and having
worked in a startup still might make me enjoy my life more (while working at a
good "wage-slave job" 9-5)

1) Building a boat. It wouldn't be worthwhile economically, but it sure would
be fun.

2) Dropping out of society and becoming a ski bum, and doing absolutely
nothing every single day but ski. (did it, it was really fun, but eventually
it becomes boring)

3) Working for a big established company on research that wouldn't be possible
at a startup (crazy thought I know, but sometimes the big companies actually
have advantages)

4) Going down the ph.D. route and becoming a professor

5) Skipping all of it and being a high school teacher and inspiring youth the
way I was inspired, and coding FOSS stuff at nights and during the summer

All of them lead to meaningful and _fun_ lives in the manner that working on
stupid web app designed to sell some ad impressions so I can make 8 million
bucks of "fuck you money" just doesn't, at least for me.

Now a startup that actually changes the world, well I'd do that for a lot of
reasons that have nothing to do with "fuck you money".

How about "fuck you living", as in, I get to do what I want and say fuck you
to anyone who says otherwise (including this guy), and it has nothing to do
with how much money I have in the bank. It all comes down to the decisions you
make.

------
arvinjoar
I stopped reading at "wage-slave". Let's not use language that implies that
working for a wage is slavery. Slavery is always forced on you, you have _no
choice_ but to work, not because you need to eat, but because the man with the
whip says so. It's offensive to compare the situation of a slave and someone
who earns a salary.

Slavery is force, not from nature, but from another human being, if you can't
see the the distinction between adapting to our environment (sure, we have to
eat) and being forced by another human being to work, or die, then sorry, I
won't bother reading whatever it is you want me to read.

~~~
binaryfinery
Hierarchy of needs: air, food, shelter. If you live in the USA and want food
and shelter, you cannot get it without paying the man taxes. Even if you own
your own land, you must pay taxes on it.

The counter argument (that one could be a homeless person), is no more useful
than pointing out that a slave could choose to die: yes a hard choice, but a
_choice_ non the less.

So the creation of a tax system, whereby a person is forced to pay taxes, a
percentage of which goes to the rich that hold government debt, is a system
where everyone is forced to work by men with guns. That's slavery.

But you can believe that you're not a slave just because there are slaves, or
have been slaves, who have even less choices than you do.

~~~
krschultz
If you don't make any money, you won't have to pay taxes. If you don't have
any bills, you won't need to make any money.

Taxes are not what creates the issue you refer to, bills are.

The individual really controls those expenses. That is why any comparison to
slavery is asine, out of touch, and offensive. Rolling in TAXES == SLAVERY is
the icing on the cake.

You control your own expenses. I've lived very cheap. Give up your car, your
house, your savings, your retirement account, you restaurent budget, your
going out budget. The only thing left is rent and food. I lived for a whole
winter as a ski bum with a couple guys, you split up rent in a cheap cabin and
shop at the grocery store and it becomes almost free.

There is a reason people can ski all day and get by just by waiting tables or
cleaning toilets - it is because they have found out that the thing holding
most people into day to day salaried jobs are self imposed. If you give all of
that up to do something you want, you are completely free.

So don't say it can't be done, because I have lived through it and enjoyed
every minute of it.

~~~
c1sc0
I've known plenty of people like this in the climbing community. When you drop
out of society, it is amazing how little you need.

------
WingForward
From the comma in the title, I thought the article was about recognizing money
isn't a guarantee of happiness. As in, "Say, "Fuck you" to money itself. And
instead focus on living life (and running a company) that doesn't rely on a
purely materialistic metric of success."

Sadly, that's not what the article was about.

------
GavinB
_I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop
working and do what I want’ never make that $X million._

If that's the case, then why do so many start-ups sell to bigger companies?
Every month we hear about another one. The "swing for the fences" companies
that go through to IPO (Facebook, Google) or massive acquisition (Youtube) are
more and more rare.

The Angel's question is meaningless unless you also know how optimistic you
are about the company's chances of growing enough to deserve a much better
deal.

~~~
dasil003
Yeah, this guy worked at Goldman and believes that "rapacious greed" is
necessary for success. Well, I don't doubt that's true in the financial world.
But in the wider world there are more types of motivations. As an investor,
it's reasonable to favor greed, but it's silly to think that money is the only
thing that puts fire in a person's belly. Consider Stallman and Torvalds for
instance... I'd argue they've added more value to the world than any partner
at Goldman ever has.

------
jacquesm
I'm not sure how typical the angel quote is, most angels would be happy as
long as the founders were happy with a buy-out.

An exit of 15 million which yields $500K to the investor after putting up
$100K means that the angel only holds about 3% of the company anyway.

Also, as a rule you don't blog or write about your verbal agreement, you wait
until the agreement is in writing and the money is in the bank and you've
agreed with your investors that you can go public with the news.

Some people will back out of a deal if you go public like this, even if
they're not mentioned by name.

A deal isn't done until the money is in the bank.

And essentially he write that he told the guy just what he thought he wanted
to hear, and now blogs that he is baffled by this _and_ and that he didn't
tell him the truth.

Let's hope that said 'angel' doesn't read that blog.

------
zaidf
_The company valuation he’d get in on would mean that such an acquisition
would represent a 5x return, over something like three months. That’s a
gargantuan return on an annualized basis._

You're totally missing the part where angels invest in companies that give
them zero return. Even the worst stocks give you _some_ money back. Unfair
comparison.

------
dirtae
"Before anything else, let’s do the numbers: money market funds yield around
4%."

What? The Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund (VMMXX) is yielding about 0.13%
right now, and I think that's fairly typical.

~~~
hugh3
"Right now" is a weird time for US dollar assets. Take a longer-term view and
4% is reasonable.

Incidentally, my savings account in Australia is still paying 4.6%.

------
sosuke
To answer the authors question. Absolutely sell out, if your first success
buys you the freedom to fail a thousand more times it is worth selling. He
said those that would sell out are those that don't already have FU money,
that they aren't in the club. Those founders that hold out might already have
that FU money and are free to risk holding out. Each founder in those cases
can't be compared.

A man asked me to follow him into a startup I didn't believe in, he could go
in and fail completely and come out the other side without a scratch because
of his previous success. The risk was too high for me because I didn't already
have FU money to cushion a complete failure.

~~~
jacquesm
Going in to a start-up with founders that have different risk profiles is a
great way to get in to very bad situations.

~~~
c1sc0
Can you elaborate?

~~~
jacquesm
Sure. Let's say that your partner has a ton of money in the bank and you are
dirt poor. (Exaggerated, but that makes it easier to see where the problems
can come from).

After a year or two the business makes some money and you now have a steady
living. Your majority partner decides to make an all-or-nothing ploy, it fails
and you lose your living. He doesn't care because he already had his steady
life. Of course, it could have gone the other way but the more risky a move
the bigger the chance that it will fail so that's not a 50/50 thing.

It's just one of hundreds of variations to the theme but I think it clarifies
the point sufficiently.

If all the partners in a business have a similar risk profiles then they are
all going to be behind most of the strategic decisions, which in turn will
help with both morale and explaining things to the home front (if you have
one).

------
steveklabnik
This is an interesting contrast to the article by A Smart Bear about why he
'sold out': <http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html>

------
swombat
Very good, well written article.

Can someone with a wide breadth of experience like pg comment on whether the
equation of rapacious greed with likelihood of getting fuck-you money out of
the startup game is actually correct empirically?

------
thibaut_barrere
_Startup founders are in the unique position of having to seriously ask
themselves the following cocktail party question_

No, really, absolutely not. There are a lot more people able to retire and
live comfortably than you think (people running simple brick and mortar
businesses I know of, for instance).

And one point: FU money is not the same amount for everyone.

For me, FU money (if I had to live until 100 with my wife and son) is around
1.000.000 €, based on our standard of living.

------
lsc
>it’s really the only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3
billion.

Oh man, spoken like someone who has never earned less than $20K/year. I don't
have any experience supporting myself on less (as before I made it to that tax
bracket, I was living with my parents) but I imagine the transition from
$1/day to $2/day is even more dramatic.

Granted, my experiences living in that income tax bracket without parental
support were mercifully short, but there's a pretty dramatic difference
between making $10K/year and making $30K/year.

Also, I think your perceived earning ability has a lot to do with comfort
levels. Right now, I'm paying myself maybe $30K year... but I think it'd take
about 20 minutes to get a $100K+/year job, if I could convince someone I was
ready to work for them rather than for myself, which I think makes me quite a
bit more comfortable than I would be otherwise... I have a safety net. Maybe
not quite as much of a safety net as a couple million in the bank, but it's
still a pretty cushy net, and I use that net from time to time. No matter how
badly I fail, I know I can go get a cushy job that pays me far more money than
I need without requiring me to work that hard.

------
nandemo
> _So, will you sell out for fuck-you money?_

I'm not sure if the writer is serious in his use of "sell out". I think it
very funny. If you sell your company for a mere $10M you're a "sell out" but
if you want more and more then you're the real thing.

------
dooshydoo
A somewhat irresponsible and hypothetical goad.

A truly bankrupt sense of self-worth would be refusing 15MM for a germ of a
business. It’s one thing to entertain delusions of grandeur, but to
rationalize it by concluding you’re an interchangeable cog who fell backward
into a successful startup is disheartening. The rapacious quality you speak of
would not preclude the acceptance of an exit; rather, it would fuel it.

------
portman
_"if you think of the astronomical economic gap between, say, a Malian
subsistence farmer and a one-man economy like Rupert Murdoch, it’s really the
only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3 billion"_

This is clearly written by someone who's never spent time living on less than
$5 per day.

There is a "binary phase change" at $1/day and another at $2/day.

Earning less than $1/day, like over 1 BILLION people do, is a constant
struggle for survival. The moment you earn over $1 day, the most basic needs
of food and water are much more likely to be met.

There's another phase change at $2/day, at which point shelter becomes a real
option and survival rates increase significantly.

I know this isn't an article on international development, but don't bring up
the Malian subsistence farmer if you think his life is somehow just as easy as
that of a $100,000k "wage slave".

------
gaius
_If they got paid $2MM that year, they’d want $4MM. Pay them $10MM, and they’d
hanker for $50MM._

That's a spurious comparison, because these guys aren't motivated by "buying
stuff". Sure they do buy stuff, but for them, money is about keeping score,
like who's scored the most goals in a football team.

------
msort
I know several people who have made FU money (several millions). From my
observations, their lives are not much different from the rest of us.

Who a person marries, how fulfilling the days (work or non-work) are seems to
matter more than pure amount of money.

Time is limited and never enough. Money is not.

------
mr_twj
I thought this blog was going to elucidate on "fuck you, money" but it just
reverted down to "fuck you money." The comma makes all the difference in the
world. Really, disappointing.

------
samratjp
But Scott Fitzgerald called this out in _Gatsby_ eons ago: "So we beat on,
boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

------
joey_bananas
Wow, this sounds like the screed of a collage freshman who just discovered
that the adult world is like, totally fake and shallow, man.

~~~
dreaming
Tell me more about this collage freshman. Or is this a subtle suggestion
hinting at a broad but nonspecific makeup of his persona...

------
yason
Money is a funny thing.

First you want it so that you could do whatever it is that you really want to
do. Then when you have eventually got the money, you're likely to be in a
position where money is no longer the priority—but rather the priority is what
you really want to do. Sure, you take the money, you have the money, and you
value the money's worth but it's not the thing that's driving you.

------
lionhearted
> Crunching more realistic numbers, ‘fuck-you money’ is about $4.2MM for a 30
> year old guy who plans on dying at 70 and wants to make $200K/year.

...assuming no bad decisions with the money (unrealistic).

...assuming you don't go on a spending spree (which everyone says they won't
do, but a significant majority of people who find themselves in cash do in
fact do).

...and so on.

------
danbmil99
one thing he doesn't factor in is that when you get FU money, you suddenly
find that you have a cadre -- a virtual entourage -- of friends, family, and
hangers-on who you never realized were (according to them) supporting you for
years with your crazy dreams, and therefore are morally justified in expecting
you to enrich their lives along with your own.

This can happen in more subtle ways than "yo gimme some cash for dinner". You
find that scads of folks have their own zany startup ideas; your wife is ready
to fulfill her dream of big-home ownership; your peers expect you to send your
kids to the same fancy schools they send theirs to (and your kids agree).

People have written about this, esp. wrt lottery winners, but the same
mechanics apply to the Silicon Valley lottery.

------
damoncali
Well written, thought provoking, but nonethless nonsense.

------
maztenz
i dont can't hack the ethernet telkomflash who can help me?????

------
korch
_As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees
that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer
to this single question: how much money will it bring in?_

—Alexis de Tocqueville

I agree with everything in this post 100%—it's spot on and well worth
_meditating_ on over the course of several _years_ , combined with some
serious reading in the ancient philosophers.

Ultimately, ain't it a bitch that the law of diminishing marginal utility
causes the demand curve to have a negative slope!?

IMHO, that happens to be the best proof that a _gift culture_ is a higher
ideal to aim for than an _efficiently allocated capitalist society_ premised
on the _FUD_ illusion of artifical scarcity. It is better to give than to
receive(or accumulate) after all. (I recommend the writings of Buckminster
Fuller more than nearly anything).

Everything that everyone thinks matters, doesn't. I can't wait for the day
when American "culture" gains the escape velocity to free itself from its own
materialism. On the bright side, the American Empire is well on the way to
smashing into the rocks, and shattering into an impoverished 3rd world nation.
At least our collective happiness, sanity and basic decency will be restored.

------
TotlolRon
The phrase is a disgrace to the idea it conveys.

~~~
scott_s
I disagree. The phrase nakedly demonstrates it's about financial freedom - the
freedom from ever having to worry about money every again. It's when you don't
need your paycheck that you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck
off. People who depend on their paycheck can't do that.

~~~
TotlolRon
> _you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off._

As said. A disgrace.

~~~
boucher
I think you're confusing having the power to say something with having the
obligation to say it.

~~~
TGJ
If I had the power/money to tell someone anything I wanted, I think that I
could muster a few brain cells to come up with something more meaningful or
creative.

