
Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich - 3d3mon
http://www.seattle20.com/blog/Hey-Guys-It-s-Totally-Okay-If-You-Don-t-Get-Rich.aspx
======
pg
In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order
to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people.

That could be because we prefer startups whose founders include hackers. On
the other hand, we don't just prefer that type because they're more fun to
hang around with, but because in our opinion they're more likely to succeed.

~~~
hyperbovine
It's the Mexican fisherman story. Sacrifice your freedom and happiness so that
you can get rich so that you can have freedom and happiness.

Why not just take the direct route?

~~~
rick888
"It's the Mexican fisherman story. Sacrifice your freedom and happiness so
that you can get rich so that you can have freedom and happiness."

and how do you suppose we do that?

Freedom to me means:

1) not having to work for anyone 2) having enough time to do what I want 3)
traveling around the world

You need money to do all of these. To get money, you need to create something
that people are willing to pay for, which takes some sacrifices.

You are sacrificing some time and freedom now for complete freedom later.

~~~
jasonkester
Sounds like you've never tried this freedom that you speak of. I've been doing
the 3 things on your list for the better part of 10 years now, and I've never
been wealthy.

3\. Living on the road is no more expensive than living anywhere else. Less
usually, since there's no rent or car payment involved. I can live large in
Thailand for $500/month.

2\. Living on the beach, I once calculated that I needed to bill _one day per
month_ to break even. Anything above that went into savings. That leaves 29
days a month to do whatever you like.

1\. During those 29 days per month, I work for either a.) myself or b.)
nobody. Maybe once a year I'll take a short contract, pull in 20k or whatever,
and repeat for another year.

And that's just the level of effort needed for subsistence. Any money earned
above that goes straight in to the "retirement" fund, in quotes because
frankly I consider myself retired today.

~~~
ramchip
Aren't you extremely wealthy compared to the average Thai?

It sounds interesting for someone in your kind of situation, but there's a lot
of assumptions that are not universals: being fairly rich (or having skills
worth a lot) off the start, being limited to cheap countries (the parent
poster talked about going around the world, which sounds a lot more expensive
than and quite different from staying on a beach in Thailand), having skills
that can be applied via teleworking and short contracts, etc.

------
enjo
Of course it's not ok. At some level getting rich is a life-or-death issue.
How do I get enough money to retire? How can I possibly afford health-care?
What if I or my lovely wife get cancer?

The reality is, the later years of your life are going to be significantly
more secure and happier if you make a lot of money.

~~~
HockeyPlayer
Don't be silly. She wrote that her friend, "could easily bring in a low six-
figure income"

If you save wisely, you can retire just fine after a career at a tech company
making 2-3x the US median salary. And most companies have good health coverage
for the cancer.

She is talking about the pressure to make $10M or more through a startup, not
getting the money to retire comfortably.

~~~
kscaldef
> And most companies have good health coverage for the cancer.

Well... kinda. One of the dirty little secrets of employer-provided group
health care is that when you have one person whose health care costs vastly
exceed the average, there's enormous pressure to get that person out of the
"group". I've know companies where someone got cancer and the premiums for the
whole company doubled the next year.

~~~
jimbokun
This is a good economic explanation for why national health care systems
should outperform employer based (or any other) systems. You can't get a
larger pool of people to spread risk around, under a single legal framework,
than an entire nation state.

~~~
kscaldef
It's not really about the overall performance or cost of coverage. The
advantage, in this case, of national health care is that you can't be kicked
out of the "group" (i.e. fired because you're raising the insurance premiums
for the whole company), and there's no concept of "uninsurable".

------
jlgosse
Without trying to sound like an absolute ass, this article shows EXACTLY why
most of the founders of the biggest empires and hottest startups are in fact
men. I say MOST as I'm sure there are many women as well, but clearly they are
overshadowed by men in this case.

~~~
scrod
> _Without trying to sound like an absolute ass..._

Some things just come naturally to you I suppose.

~~~
techiferous
"Some things just come naturally to you I suppose."

You just called him an ass. That's rude.

He(?) stated that "most of the founders of the biggest empires and hottest
startups are in fact men" which is a fact. He's also speculating that the
pressures put on men to get rich is the main cause of this. I see nothing
offensive about what he said.

~~~
scrod
Actually, I implied that he _sounded like an ass_.

And it's disingenuous of you to pretend that the purpose of his comment was to
purely, disinterestedly disseminate facts.

Instead of hearing the wisdom of the article writer, he demonstrates precisely
the mentality with which she was finding fault, essentially generalizing her
philosophy to all women, and painting it in the light of failure rather than
moderation and internal peace.

Frankly, I find his comment chauvinistic and somewhat offensive, and I'm not
even a woman.

------
tansey
Imagine you're in a big slot machine tournament with 150 competitors. Each
player gets to pull one of two machines. One machine pays $1 every time. The
other machine pays an average of $0 but has a variance of $50. Everyone gets 1
pull, the scores are tallied, and the bottom half of the players are out, and
a new group is brought in to replace them.

Which machine would you pull? The evidence[1] is pretty clear that if the
variance is high, the population will converge to people who go for the second
one.

Not to sound sexist here, but women are not faced with having to pull the slot
machine. From an evolutionary standpoint, they don't have (get?) to play in
the tournament. Their goal is to minimize their own losses, since they only
have a very small number of offspring they can create.

Men are forced into the arena, which creates the mentality that has the author
baffled. We have to keep trying to hit it big, otherwise our lineage dies off
as some other lucky guy comes along and forces us out.

That's what being an entrepreneur is all about. It's the diligent pulling of
the slot machine with the lower mean.[2]

[1] Fogel, et. al., "Do Evolutionary Processes Minimize Expected Losses?"
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.8.8...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.8.8219&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
[PDF]

[2] Everything after footnote 1 is pure opinion and based on only my own
intuition. :)

~~~
jimbokun
Except, today, high levels of wealth is inversely correlated with the number
of offspring.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Not really. It looks like there is weak or no correlation between wealth and
number of offspring.

~~~
arohner
No. In most countries, an increase in productivity / GDP / quality of life is
strongly correlated with a lowering in fertility rate:

[http://geocurrentevents.blogspot.com/2010/07/misconceptions-...](http://geocurrentevents.blogspot.com/2010/07/misconceptions-
about-mexicos-birth-rate.html)

------
ttol
An interesting article that talks about an entire nation's views on marriage,
status, and success is:
[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-06/25/content_1001855...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-06/25/content_10018557.htm)

It is so ingrained that one of the women described her marital vision: "I'd
rather be miserable sitting in a BMW than be happy riding a bicycle."

It's no surprise that an extension of this is that the most desirable man, and
bachelor, in China is the founder of Baidu, the largest search engine in
China, due to his wealth.

~~~
raghava
A similar story: [http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-china-
bache...](http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-china-
bachelor-20100621,0,755582,print.story)

------
johnrob
For both wealth and (perceived) beauty, there is often a relatively easy
solution: move!

For more beauty, move to a location with a greater ratio of the opposite sex.

For more wealth, move to a location with a lower cost of living.

I don't know how much longer these arbitrage opportunities will exist, but for
now they probably represent the biggest 'lifehacks' one can make.

~~~
waqf
If you're thinking of trying the sex ratios thing, I strongly suggest
controlling for age, and preferably social class.

~~~
carnevalem
Do you have any data to do this? I think the results would be interesting.

~~~
waqf
Sadly, I was considering including just such an appeal with my original
comment. If you find some, let me know?

------
terra_t
Well, there's also the issue that the economy refuses to provide honest
reliable jobs for honest reliable people...

If your dad or mom is a professor, maybe you can get a tenure track job, but
if you're anybody else you've got take what's in the marketplace... And
"playing it safe" means the odds are 100% that you'll get screwed...

The only career path that seems possible of providing any security of all is
an "all in" bet on something that might make it big.

~~~
abalashov
Not directly related, but as the child of a family that amounts to a dynastic
succession of academics, I feel the need to disabuse anyone reading of the
impression that there is any connection whatsoever, at all, between having
professors for parents and getting a tenure-track position.

As it stands, it's nearly impossible for spouses to exert enough leverage to
find academic employment at the same institution. If they're lucky, they'll
spend a good deal of their career building up the karma to pull that one off;
there isn't anything left over for little Billy.

~~~
terra_t
Well, I'll just say that, when I was in grad school at an Ivy League school
that 100% of the professors, for whom I knew anything about their parents,
were also professors -- and that was a sample between 20 and 30 people.

Things might be different at other schools, but I do know that even the
Chronicle of Higher Education is starting to recognize the 'dynastic
succession' phenomenon after years of it going on under wraps.

~~~
nagrom
That could have multiple causes. Often, if your parents have achieved a lot
academically, you will palce more weight on that aspect of your life. You'll
get better grades and you'll be more likely to become an academic yourself.

Since we're swapping anecdotes, as an academic, I have _never_ known anyone to
get a position just because their parent works in the field. _Ever_. The
competition is ridiculous, to the point where many Americans opt to go
elsewhere and leave the academic jobs to the people willing to work 14 hours a
day, 6 days a week.

I would not be surprised if many modern academics would prefer that their
offspring go into industry. The rewards are greater and the competition is
less, given the level or reward on offer.

~~~
Locke1689
Don't forget the genetic aspect -- smart parents tend to have smart kids.

------
jchonphoenix
Great article and really hits home. One thing that's overlooked, however, is
the reasoning behind the need to earn money.

For some people, money doesn't matter. Yet they still have a burning need to
get rich. This is because they have something to prove. And money is their
scorecard.

~~~
crayz
Exactly. Reading a comment right next to yours, "Are lower expectations
supposed to be a good thing?". It's become ingrained in Western and especially
American culture that money is one of if not the most important measure for
judging success. We don't all see each others paychecks and bank account
balances, so this manifests in various ways from wanting prestige jobs to
conspicuous consumption

People need to ask themselves - what do I want out of life? What are my
personal measures for success, that I can explain and justify to myself based
on my beliefs. Instead almost everyone simply avoids thinking on that level
and instead absorbs and adopts the measurements promoted by society

It's not that making money is bad. It's that far too many people blindly focus
on making and spending money without considering the amount of time and sanity
and other opportunities for living that's being consumed by their consumerism

~~~
antareus
Thank you. This comment is a breath of fresh air amongst the cries of, "but,
it's just evolution that makes us want to hoard money!" That sort of attitude
strikes me as fatalistic. Success is what you want it to be, not what you're
told it should be. Even if evolution has drilled into us the need to
accumulate wealth, that doesn't mean you have to accept it. I want to make
things, and make them well. That is success for me.

I abhor the dating scene, because it perpetuates the morally bankrupt power
dynamics that make up shallow value assessments of individuals. People's
identities are shattered and reduced to a 3-tuple of salary, IQ, and
waistlines.

------
mattmaroon
This is a misunderstanding of where the motivation comes from. It's not
societal pressure that causes either men to want to be rich or women to look
good. It's an evolutionary artifact.

~~~
waqf
There's also a popular misunderstanding as to why people can walk. It's not
your legs that cause you to be able to walk. It's an evolutionary artifact.

------
ajdecon
I would love to be rich, but I'm starting to realize that it's not what I need
to be happy. What I need, personally, is a life in which I can work on things
which I think are fun and interesting, and which pay me enough to live, save a
little, and spend time having fun with my girlfriend.

The definition of that changes. At one point I thought the only way to do that
was to get a PhD and find my way into academia; later it was found a company
and make an obscene amount of money. Both of those goals were great, but the
first one chewed me up and the second is one I don't know how to do yet. Right
now... the goal is to find a job where the I can work on fun data-based
problems. A startup would be fun, but so would a big company, or a government
agency like the CDC. I don't need to be rich, but I do need to find
satisfaction in my work.

And we'll see what happens next.

------
snitko
See, the problem is, we don't want to hear that. We want to hear "do it for
god's sake" or "stop dreaming, you're a looser". The latter would motivate
even more. But not that it's okay. It's not. If it was, I'd be doing something
else.

------
forgot_password
I feel as if this problem is exacerbated in the tech community because your
credibility comes from having a big exit. For example, Chris Dixon is
definitely an insightful guy but would he be as widely consumed if he hadn't
sold a company for millions of dollars?

The commenters seem to agree that freedom and independence are the only things
worth coveting. In VC-talk a tech founder can usually get financial
independence for life with a "double" However, its the guys who hit the home
runs that are respected and looked up to, and I imagine that drives a lot of
tech founders.

------
switch
she's neither male nor rich so her advice is bogus.

there are some things that are just true - all other things being equal women
prefer men with money.

Even when all other things are not quite equal women prefer men with money.

here's a quick way to test it - list all the men she's ever dated/been in a
relationship with and check on how many earned significantly less than her and
how many earned significantly more.

This is the worst advice anyone could ever give anyone interested in doing a
start-up. It's typical woman advice - they don't tell you what works - just
something that'll make you feel it's OK to be a loser.

------
gyardley
In my experience, there's much less pressure on men to get rich than there is
to get a 'good' job or a 'real' job - something perceived as stable and not
risky.

------
leot
If/when we achieve negligible senescence, and the social order becomes frozen,
it might become pretty important to find oneself at the top of the heap.

~~~
orangecat
I don't actually think that would happen. Corporations are "immortal" today,
and they can still rise and fall quickly.

------
necrecious
Society places pressures on every one, male or female. It has been great for
feminist movement to try to identify counter some of the pressure that has
made women miserable, but there isn't really an outlet for men.

In fact, I think pressure on men are growing. Being smart, funny, successful
and as good looking as Brad Pitt. Men are doing more cosmetics surgery and
getting eating disorders now too.

------
Sukotto
We need the startup-founder version of this video
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXf8fr0Kp3Q> (Depicts what goes into
transforming a woman into a billboard image)

Not to convince us to stop trying... but to convince us to use a more
reasonable metric than the one in 10,000,000 founder that makes a ginormous
exit.

------
cwp
Ever hear a business idea disparaged for being a "lifestyle business?" For one
reason or another startup culture looks down on business models that provide
modest wealth via ongoing profits, rather than a big exit. Maybe it's the
influence of VCs, maybe it's something else, but it's definitely there.

------
holdenc
The path to starting a successful business is littered with advice like this.
It's certainly not easy, and the price is typically high (relationships, time,
health...) especially when starting from nothing. But from observation, it's
obvious that for those who do make it, failure is not "okay."

------
Sthorpe
I could careless about money. I'm actually horrible with it. I build things
and break a lot of stuff. One thing I have become obsessed about is reaching
my goals. Not sure if i'm the only one, but I am terrified of myself. For
example, has anyone set a goal in the beginning of the year and then on
December 31 reviewed how far they got? A new years resolution? I have gotten
very serious about my routines and where they take me. I have been surprised
by how hard it is to keep a goal in sight and develop routines that help me
reach it. But, so far, my new routine has become my happiness. I wish for all
of you the same.

------
joey_bananas
Why do I get 20 odd javascript dialog popups from that page?

~~~
joey_bananas
Answer: Twitter is broken.

------
dstein
The richest man in the cemetery is rolling in his grave.

~~~
mrtron
Nope, decomposing like everyone else.

------
evanrmurphy
The unusually high number of comments and upvotes on this post might suggest
that a lot of HN readers want to know it's okay if they don't get rich.

------
Revisor
_I’ve watched him lose his health, sanity, credit and girlfriends again and
again for this obsession. “This is literally killing you,” I tell him. “It has
to stop.”_

If she can see he's doing something wrong, she should help him get on track,
not discourage him. I would avoid this lady like plague.

------
plainOldText
If this would be OK then HN would lose most of its users. :)))

~~~
iamwil
Hardly, if HN attracts its intended audience--people that are intellectually
curious about everything.

~~~
xyzzyb
I'm not sure that's the HN audience. I came here looking to get away from the
childishness of reddit, yet have found a new (and, hitherto to me, unknown)
brand of childishness: the entitled startup programmer. Reddit was primarily
populated by high school/college kids, but it definitely had a significant
population besides that.

As far as I can tell, HN is much more of an extreme monoculture; and one I
have to confess I'm rather disappointed in. Instead of thoughtful discourses
and commentary from those looking to expand their worldview, it's a strong
current of close-mindedness and superiority.

I'm sure that my brief glimpse into the culture of HN is woefully inaccurate
and I may certainly have just unluckily gotten the wrong impression from the
threads I've read; but I doubt it.

~~~
iamwil
startup programmer is so fiercely defended here because it's not in many other
places, especially in the day to day work life.

What one may call close-mindedness may be what a community strong identifies
as its values.

Regardless, welcome to HN. 12 days is but a blink. Keep participating. If it
doesn't jive with you, perhaps you can find it in other communities or one
that you start on your own.

------
scythe
...unless _you're_ not okay with it.

------
skmurphy
"No man is rich whose expenditure exceeds his means; and no one is poor whose
income exceeds his outgoings." Thomas Chandler Haliburton

------
yannk
... "as long as _I_ do"

------
c00p3r
...if you born poor and in a wrong place (environment).

------
madair
_The cake is a lie_

;)

------
nickpp
Bullshit. It's OK not to get rich, but it's not OK not to try.

~~~
gxti
Why do you think that?

