

Ask News.YC: What would you do if you were a billionaire? - trekker7

Let's say someone gave you $1 billion tomorrow. After 2 - 3 years of being rich, what do you see yourself doing on a day-to-day basis?
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mattmaroon
I'll tell you what I'd do, man, two chicks at the same time, man. Damn
straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had a million
dollars I could hook that up, cause chicks dig a dude with money.

All office space quoting aside, if my startup IPOs I'm buying a winery in
Napa, preferably Stags Leap district, and a house in the hills of St. Helena
with enough land to let my dogs run free and terrorize the neighbors.

And I'll probably jump into the restaurant industry.

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jgrahamc
On the 'two chicks' thing, there's no need to be a billionaire for that. There
are plenty of countries where prostitution is legal and you could do two
chicks.

John.

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MisterMerkin
What an appropriate name..

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jgrahamc
And that coming from a guy whose name is 'merkin' :-)

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brianmckenzie
Step One: Construct a giant concrete sarcophagus similar to the contraption
they used to seal off Chernobyl.

Step Two: Hire a reliable private investigator to ascertain the location of
the target: Creed's rehearsal space.

Step Three: Fill the sarcophagus with alligators, poop, and diseased ferrets.

Step Four: Rent several hundred industrial-grade helicopters and lower the
sarcophagus onto the target.

Step Five: Construct a monument honoring the heroism of the alligators and
diseased ferrets.

~~~
gstar
Brilliant.

I'd throw in another 2bil if you can knock off Maroon 5 and Nickelback at the
same time?

Get your people to fax my people.

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rms
Fund scientific research at a laboratory I direct with my business partner
Josh. I think we could knock off a few major diseases like AIDS, or maybe get
bacteria effectively generating energy.

To cure HIV (idea is Josh's): Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV
patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells.
Introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in
culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These
transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough
immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not
develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the
patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to
HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.

To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to
each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the
transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory,
will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5
receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the
technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation,
transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the
levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which
we can also easily test on the mice.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
If that actually works it's a shame that it depends on you becoming a
billionaire first. Can it not work the other way around?

~~~
rms
It could, but we still need the money to hire teams of PhDs. It's
unfortunately not the kind of thing we can do in someone's basement.

~~~
falsestprophet
Are you sure? You could walk into a public college library and start reading
papers. The world needs mad scientists.

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pistoriusp
_Pay off all my family members debt._ Setup a trust to provide my family
members with _reasonable_ salaries. Just enough to let them do what they want,
but not enough that they don't have to work. _Buy a giant piece of land and
move my parent's and their families on to the same property, if they want
too..._ Go to university. _Setup a decent course in South Africa to teach kids
about programming._ Get that silver Porsche 911 that I've always wanted. _Go
to my old work, in my new Porsche, and show it to my ex-boss._ Fund something
to fight crime in South Africa.

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pg
Day to day? Much the same thing, actually.

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kyro
I'd head straight to the Wendy's value menu.

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adrianwaj
Doing things that test and develop my positive personal traits, and then
sharing that journey and those discoveries with others.

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myoung8
Starting another company. It's about the thrill of the chase.

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kirse
Well I'm posting on YC right now, so I guess that's one.

I'd give it away creatively, always wanted to throw money to the wind in a
crowded city street.

That and fund domestic programs to help encourage the success of our next
generation of kids.

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wlievens
Invest it to grow to sixty billion and use it to build a space elevator, duh.

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mxh
Two possibilities:

a.) Physics. Always found it interesting, but not into academia as a way to
pay the bills.

b.) Feeling poor compared to those bastards with 11 figure net worths.

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ig1
Do social entrepreneurships stuff. My two main ideas are creating an mturk for
non-profits (allow micro-contributions of time/work to charity) and create a
careers guidance website that doesn't suck.

I realize I could do these now, but trying to juggle full-time job + part-time
startups + current non-profit work + real-life is hard enough already without
adding more stuff to it.

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runningskull
Never work again (unless I absolutely wanted to, for pure fun and challenge).
Invest half (maybe some in startups?). Buy a sizable, but comfortable, house
on top of a remote mountain in Montana or Colorado, and use it as my
headquarters as I trek across the world.

But, some amount of time into my aimless wandering, I would no doubt get the
itch again, and have to start creating something.

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trekker7
For me: Travel a lot and get good at photography, buy a Ferrari and get into
amateur racing, start a venture capital firm to fund social entrepreneurs
(don't know if this is possible yet), own and run a cool new restaurant, be a
director/writer for some independent films, do something to make in-class
education more fun for high school students (possibly using software).

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fauigerzigerk
I'd finally create the fgPhone. You may now speculate about how it will purge
the world of all phone carriers and generally redefine telecommunication as we
know it. How it works? Well, I'd make the ISO, the W3C and the JCP join forces
to create the mother of all committees...

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amichail
You might consider giving it away to charities and keeping just enough for
your financial independence (5 million say). You might be able to preserve
your privacy that way.

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adrianwaj
Charities often give less than 5% to the end recipients and then bank or
invest the rest.

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brlewis
Such speculation is counterproductive.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=74030>

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asmosoinio
At least for a while: Not have anything to do with computers. No looking at a
monitor.

What I would do? Snowboard & learn to surf. Paint.

