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Disgusting.
There is no set amount where a person makes enough money, only the individual's subjective level when he stops caring about money to a certain degree. No one can tell him he has had "enough."
f that guy.
Obama reveals his core ideology when he's off the teleprompter. It's truly sad that our president is a socialist who hates wealth, individualism, and the free market. Americans who still believe in the greatness of this nation must do everything they can to send Obama back to Chicago on January 20, 2013.
Hopefully republicans can nominate someone more competent than Mccain . Unlikely though considering they're all retarded.
LOL, YOURE RIGHT
Romney 2012!!!!
I wish he'd shut his piehole with his attacks on Wall Street. Is it 1/20/2013 yet? What about healthcare companies who'se big wigs were flying private planes and first class at the same time premiums were rising and people were still paying boat loads out of pocket. Is Wall Street innocent? No. But if you're going to scold those who made money off the working man, go big or go home. Scold everyone or quiet down.
Fuck Obama
Silver banana for you my friend....
Obama needs to look up capitalism that communist !
what does he say after that? sounded like he was joking
He says I'm Obama and I am a complete jerk off.
I was curious about what he said afterward, so I did a search. The audience responded with a laugh and he continued to say:
"But you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if if you're providing a good product or you're providing good service."
(The double "if" was included in an effort to be faithful to the original.)
I had a feeling they cut it off when they did because it took away from its incendiary message.
Cool. Let's all move to HK/Switzerland/etc (see other thread for that)....or Sweden. At least Sweden does socialism right...with gorgeous blond women.
Is 400k/year with countless millions in perks for life enough? Then he should give all of his book royalties and speaking fees above that salary of his to charity. Perhaps the United Negro College fund, which is where most of his charitable giving has gone in the past anyway. 2 words: fucking. retard.
Clearly it was an manipulated quote that cut off the punch line.
Romney
Obama is a loser.
When its put in context its not a bad statement.
The more I become interested in banking the less I like Obama and more conservative I become. Anyone else feel the same way?
I used to be a liberal democrat, worked on Obama's Senate campaign back in 2004 and voted for Gore and Kerry. Once I started working and making money, I shifted decisively to the right. Becoming a fiscal conservative is part of growing up.
Actually, Obama says the exact same thing in his book (Audacity of Hope). That at some point you've made enough money (and you can afford to give most of the surplus back to society (i.e. taxes)). Black and white text that has been thoughtfully edited. If i had the book in front of me, I'd give you a page number.
In dreams from my father, Obama makes it clear that he wants to reverse the economic and social policies of Reagan. There is no doubt that Obama's ultimate goal is to turn America into a European style welfare state, where the "wealthy" who make more than $250K subsidize those who don't pay income tax.
^^^I agree. Obama really believes more government, more regulation, more taxes will solve our nation's ills. I'm scared for the future of this country. His policies and ideology are so anti-growth it's scary (don't get me started on his foreign policies).
Found this little gem a while back.
"If you're republican and young, you have no heart. If you're democrat and old, you have no brains" - Unknown.
I am happy that I do not have to pay US taxes! Like the characters in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, I am refusing to contribute to a society that believes I have no right to what I earn.
If Obama cares so much about salaries, why doesn't he get at celebrities/movie stars who contribute nothing substantial to society. Like Shia labeof really earns his cheques..
Romney 2012
Socialism
Fuck Romney and any other CFR-backed candidate.
Ron Paul 2012!
THANK YOU! +1
Guys,
This is why there has to be a little give with financial reform. If we act like the sane ones and say, "Ok, ok, maybe repealing Glass-Steagall wasn't quite as brilliant as everyone thought ten years ago" and meanwhile showcase Obama saying things that make him come off to moderates like a socialist, we can get him out of office in two years.
If it's Obama vs. a sane version of Ron Paul, I'm pretty sure Obama will lose. But if we are fighting reform at every turn and calling dems socialists in every battle, we'll lose. Romney is also a little too Bush-like for most moderates' tastes. We need a traditional balanced-budget conservative ala Eisenhower who believes in keeping the welfare state in check rather than trying to obliterate it ala Palin.
I spent the first three years of my voting career as a progressive under Bush. I've been there, done that. You can't get even by getting mad- you have to get even by being cool, calm, and relaxed while accidentally getting your opponent to shoot himself in the foot. You have to look like the responsible folks. You can't yell or scream, but you do have to say, "Uhh, guys? How are we going to handle this $13 Trillion debt? You have to focus on the issues where you're strong but do it nicely- just like the Dems did with Iraq/Iran/ the economy in 2006 and 2008.
Don't call Obama a socialist. Focus on the statement and be careful to avoid the socialist charge, but just say instead that one of the things you like about America is the fact that here, anything is possible. But it sounds like the Democrats have lost some of his faith in what America always has been- and still is.
Keep making statements that show your values and inadvertently paint Obama in what might become a negative light to voters, and you'll win in 2012. You might even win in 2010.
Haha, indeed.Actually, for me it happened when I started have to put together a budget. I found it was a lot easier- and a lot more responsible- to cut spending rather than increase revenue.
Uh, Ron Paul still thinks the gold standard is a good idea.
That said, the fact is that we need too much currency for the world to be able to run on a gold standard today. I much prefer the notion of replacing the fed with a computer algorithm who's job is to simply ensure the proper supply of money while leaning against boom/bust cycles.
And yes, Ron Paul is a crackpot. If we had a more moderate version of him (IE: Lou Dobbs if Paul is Glenn Beck), we could maybe get somewhere. We need a Papa Bear figure who wants to talk about fiscal responsibility, and limited scope in foreign policy and reducing our future obligations with entitlement spending.
RON PAUL REVOLUTION
Ron Paul is dumb.
What's the deal with Bloomberg, has he said anything about 2012 (whether he'd run or not)?
You guys live in an alternate universe. When you piss off middle america, you realize that the US does not revolve around Wall Street.
The only thing I can say is learn from Credit Suisse, ever notice how they make lots of money but fly under the radar.
.
guys a joke...wouldn't be surprised if he tried to set a maximum wage
Hes certainly creating a lot of new classicists, and burying keynes.....even though hes trying to do the opposite
.
I'm not huge on Romney, but let's be fucking honest: Ron Paul, Glen Beck (?!), and standalone Sarah Palin have no chance of cohesively pulling enough people together to win a presidential election.
I support Romney because I believe he's the only candidate that actually has a chance at defeating Obama come November elections.
Romney has no chance. In Ohio the Dem candidate for Senator is beating a brilliant Rep. named Rob Portman, it's over.
Actually I don't think Portman is going to loose.
The Dems are destroying their party by manipulating the un-educated the same way the neo-cons manipulated the uneducated from 2000-2004 by making it all about "family values" and God, and then stabbing them in the back by lifting regulations and subsidies that allowed companies like Boeing to move over seas.
Romney was signing books in Ohio the other day, and it's a shame we live in a country where a Mormon will probably not be elected, yet Mormons don't get treatment under affirmative action and aren't considered minorities simply because they are mainly white and of a christian denomination.
I'm 100% Sicilian and I am willing to bet no grease ball will ever be president, yet you don't see me complaining, he'll we've had only one Catholic. We need to get real in America, it's not about color race or religion, people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson MAKE IT about color, race and religion, other wise they'd have no job.
Martin Luther King rolls over in his grave every time one of those two opens their mouths.
Mit Romney is a brilliant man and a savvy politician and business man.
He's the change we need in America, if Obama is re-elected I really do believe America will be on the same level as France by the end of his second term, unless the Republicans can control the House and Senate.
We may be a small percentage of the electorate, but we have a vast network. During the midterms and especially in the next P Election take the time to talk to your friends and family that may be less educated than us. Complacency is just as bad as voting for something you don't truly believe in.
bumpp
You guys are crazy. Just because you will not vote for B. Obama again does not mean he will not get reelected. Remember, being elected means getting the majority of the votes.
You're deluding yourselves. To IlliniP, I'm ready to wager some money on the fact that Obama will indeed be reelected.
You have to appeal to middle-America better than he can. Make Obama out to be an intellectual who doesn't understand what makes America successful (and you have to do this without voters realizing it), and you've won.
I don't want to use the word psy-ops- because you're ultimately letting voters make up their own minds about this- but there's something to be said for the technique of being transcending your opponent while sinking him at the same time.
Glenn Bleck. Priceless. 1:20
Oh my God. Beck is such a fool.
I think this is being said to placate the masses. Obama is a spineless Chicago machine politician with no agenda for the US except to hold on to power. He has an ear for the temperature of the crowd.
There is NO way he's going to jeopardize his wall street donations by trying to pull a Lenin. And when this temporary madness subsides, the US will return to being a commercial, capitalist nation that loves money. That being said, he has no serious opponent and will win re-election. It won't be Romney. Romney has a) no charisma and b) is not enough of a bible thumper to win the republican base.
A couple of points: the comment was largely off-handed, and the clip takes it out of context; I am a libertarian, and Ron Paul is unstable; Glenn Beck is an embarassment to the United States (and I have watched several hours of his discourse, listened to Rush Limbaugh far more than I would have liked, and seen Hannity blather on about nonsense nearly enough times to shoot myself); and Mit Romney is un-electable.
And now to school you morons in modern politics. Obama is playing a dangerous game here. The fact is this: money wins elections. Now, Obama was able to raise a substantial amount of money from non-traditional sources in his last campaign, in which he ran as a candidate of change. Given his current popularity, and the polity's general 'shiny ball syndrome,' I don't believe he is going to be as successful a fundraiser as he was in the last round of elections. People that like something new and different don't all of a sudden stop liking something new and different. And since he ran a campaign specifically designed to court those ADD voters, he is going to have a hard time maintaining his base. Sure, he'll still pull most of the black vote, but do women still love Obama? Do Hispanics? Do the aging college co-eds who are now making some money still like the idea of high taxes to pay off increasing deficits? And do the moderate Republicans who couldn't in good conscience vote for McCain (on the very real chance that he'd die in office, leaving the country in the hands of a poorly educated soccer mom with little big-time legislative experience) still want to swing left-of-center? I doubt it.
Moderates as a group act as a political damper--a counterweight that swings against the momentum. Right now, the US is swinging to the left, so moderates are itching to readjust themselves. And they will so long as there are viable alternatives. I have a hard time believing the Republicans can't find a single upstanding, intelligent, well-qualified, fiscal conservative and social moderate. They don't have to be a great debater, they merely need to be a passable orator without clearly visible liver spots who hasn't kept a mistress for the past decade.
In any case, so long as the Republicans can wrangle themselves a decent candidate, Obama is going to have a much tougher race this time, as people once again look for change.
Might be a little late, but I do feel I owe you guys a mea culpa.
The clip is clearly taken out of context, and my hat's off to Marcus and others who provided the actual full quote. It doesn't make Obama any less reprehensible to me, but I think it's important to maintain fairness and objectivity.
In my defense, I did try to find this clip in a form I could embed so you wouldn't have to go to another site to view it. At the time, the only thing I was able to find was a two and a half minute clip of Mark Levin's show where he included the above clip and then ranted about it ad nauseum. I didn't post that because I think when you listen to the kind of shit he spouts on a daily basis, you actually get a little dumber.
Obama is a fool. The problem we face is there's no reputable republican candidate. As of right now Obama will surely win in 2012. If we don't return to founding father principals this county will only become more of a welfare state. Also, Ron Paul, and Sarah Palin have no shot in hell. Palin is a half an idiot and Paul is intelligent but a bit bizarre. The person who decides to run against Obama should take a few pointers from Chris Christie, he's the only elected official who's doing his job.
A friend just sent this to me and I thought it was funny:
Rommney is not a viable canidate. Rand is a moron. Ron Paul is a moron, and he is not a viable canidate.
Romney is the biggest flip flopper to ever run for office. Give me a fucking break. People only like him because they have a hardon for finance / PE, not because of his politics (which are incredibly inconsistent.) The man's views change as frequently as the weather.
Time for the GOP to call in the dream team.
Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan.
Would be nice if we had a slightly more conservative version than Powell, but I think he's the best we can get.
Buchanan would be ok, but he has made too many talk show appearance over the years and said too many things to be taken seriously by the voting public. Compared to Powell, he is like the Coultergeist.
The Republicans need to run a moderate- completely disassociated from the tea party movement- with amazing people skills in 2012. Even then, they still might not win. We need Judd Gregg- just with Reagan's personality and Eisenhower's demeanor. If we can get that, the Republicans have a very strong chance, and I'll be happy to vote for a Republican for President for the first time in my life. Powell is the first person who comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others.
rofl
Romney is too religious/socially conservative to ever stand a chance of getting elected
wow I didn't know the users here were so single minded
you guys should be embarrassed
How Much is Enough? The Land of Milk and Honey, Angels and Money (Originally Posted: 10/13/2013)
A great new piece in The New Yorker (by Nathan Heller) came out a day or two ago, titled How San Francisco’s New Entrepreneurial Culture is Changing the Country. While the title may be a bit grandiose, the article is terrific and I recommend it to all.
An intriguing theme of it to me, though, is that more and more young professionals are asking themselves, in regards to money: How much is enough for an enjoyable life?
As one might expect from The New Yorker, the article places the idea of having a small business in an overwhelmingly positive light – the point being that autonomy is the ultimate goal. Whether you get super rich in high finance or have a team of computer geeks three deep does not make a difference: in both situations you now have the option of autonomy in your life, designing your day-to-day as you see fit and pleasurable. While I may not be a proponent of hippie food, there is a powerful quotation in the midst of the writing. The author references a famous fictitious Wall Street magnate who famously declared it’s all about being a “player, or nothing.” Heller writes, “Why be Gordon Gekko when you could make enough to have a nice place and go paleo on local greens-and then take a day or two off to cycle out to Stinson Beach? Isn’t that freedom more distinguishing than cash or a C.E.O. title, which everybody in your field has access to?”
Granted, I believe there is credence to both sides of the argument here, but the proposition, though not entirely original, is this:
Why work for 30+ years to achieve financial autonomy when you can set up a small business and do it in 5 or 10? You may not have the same amount of overall capital as in the first situation, but your lifestyle for those 25-20 years is far more balanced and rewarding, allowing you to spend time on things you want to, rather than work.
Naturally, this view excludes many of those in the world of finance (including monkeys on this site) who believe that their work is inherently fascinating and would not trade it for leisure even if the opportunity presented itself.
But therein lies a great question that we perhaps need to ask ourselves from time to time: What is your goal by entering the world of finance? If it is to make a truckload of money, to accumulate vast amounts of knowledge about financial products or government policies, or advise companies of major decisions, great. You have found just the place to do that. But if it is to achieve autonomy to design your life how you believe it is to be lived, AND you want to get a start on that early on in life, perhaps there are other considerations for your career.
In today’s day and age, the article posits, the costs of starting a business are smaller than ever, funding is easier to obtain, distribution costs are down, sales and marketing are a piece of cake using online resources, and customer service is as easy as responding to Tweets.
It reminds me, too, of a study from Skandia International’s Wealth Sentiment Monitor from last year, in which it was ‘discovered’ that an optimum income level for happiness is around $161,000. Starting your own business can certainly hit that figure, even if it doesn’t net you a cool $3.5MM by age 55.
So, all you chimps out there: what is your goal? I’m not asking what success looks like, or how to measure when ‘you’ve made it’ in life. I’m asking you to think to yourself why you entered the game in the first place and to make sure your vision is still aligned with that future realization of yourself.
As a counterpoint to your article, check out: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/three-capitalisms-yeoman…
SF might sound like a great idea from NYC, as you are waiting by the printer at 3am for the 9th copy of your pitch book, but it's no panacea. The vast majority of startups, particularly in SV which has a really screwed up ecosystem (since about the 2000s), will fail and have no real content. As a "business guy" your knowledge is nil, your ability not that great, and your arrogance a liability (I have seen many ex-bankers or McKinseys screw up a perfectly good startup).
Boston is much better, at the moment, but the corollary is it will be much harder for you to find a position in a Boston startup, because, well, a super high value adding biotech startup doesn't need you, they need PhDs for the research and the rest is provided by the investors.
Finally, startup life is not about going paleo and taking 2-3 days off. Those who succeed are extremely driven and put in more hours and more thinking effort than many people at the same age do in the finance world. My dev team has worked probably half the weekends since it started, and 3am Skype chats are not uncommon. For you to gain financial independence from an exit, you'll need to be one of the 2-3 initial, core founders and get funding on very good terms; these people do NOT slack.
Entrepreneurship is a good path if you have a problem with authority, as then you will have trouble succeeding in the corporate world. If all you want is a high paycheck, financial independence, and an easy lifestyle with much comfort, look instead to become an "executive" in a fortune 500 company, in particular somewhere like eBay where most people don't do very much and compensation is ridiculously high. Will you be competing for a fifth avenue, 40th floor apartment against HFMs? No, but you will be able to chill and still have your house in the Hamptons and your 6-series BMW. All you need in exchange is to suck up to the person above you and make them look good in the 2-3 times a month that the opportunity arises.
If you must be entrepreneurial, do consider Asia, where the execution of a lot of things you take for granted in the US, like online retail, is not great. Based in Bangkok, you can live off a $1.5k/month salary quite comfortably until your exit or cash flow positive independent state.
I agree with you, but I think it's worth noting that the original post is more valid in its positioning when you read it from the perspective of owning an actual small business, not a high risk tech startup.
Couldn't agree more. This line of reasoning was a a deciding factor in turning down my FT IB offer. Turns out I couldn't give less of a shit about financial products, and I I found $70k to be a good chunk of money, even in NYC. I'd still like to make ~$150-200k at some point in the next ten years, but my autonomy, ownership of my time, and overall happiness are much more important to me. My true idol, and I think we all have one, is influence, not money. So high finance didn't really make sense for me anymore.
That's a really cool article - thanks for the link. Some interesting theoretical stuff in there and a well thought out argument.
Appreciate your insights on SF/Boston/NYC. Any thoughts on other growing entrepreneurial ecosystems like Denver, New Orleans, or Austin?
WTF is this author smoking? He makes it sound like it's a walk-in-the-park to set up a small business and be financially autonomous. 90% of companies fail within 5 years. I just spent 2 1/2 years as an entrepreneur--it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I don't think I took a single weekday off for 2 1/2 years, let alone take a bike ride to the beach for 2 days. I made good money, but not enough to justify the workload, the 45 lbs I put on in 30 months, or the countless sleepless nights and endless worry.
Been back at the "9-5" for 4 weeks now. You know what freedom and autonomy are? 7-8 hours of sleep, a steady paycheck, and free time on most nights and weekends. You want to be a rich entrepreneur? It's not about hard work--it's about luck. Pure and simple. You don't become Mark Zuckerberg-rich because your DNA is something special or because you worked a little harder than the next guy. When passions meet at the right place and right time in the market AND you work hard then there's a very small chance you might become financially autonomous. And then there's still the infinitesimal chance of becoming a billionaire.
DCD, it sounds like you had a pretty crazy experience in the startup world recently. I'd love to learn more about it.
I certainly am not trying to imply that entrepreneurship is a cakewalk. What I'm trying to pause and think about myself at this moment, and am interested in hearing other monkeys' thoughts as well, is what is the end goal of working in finance. AND if that goal happens to be, for a certain person, financial autonomy, it may be worth it for them to consider alternatives to high finance.
Entrepreneurship is a hugely risky life decision and lifestyle, for sure. Not all newly founded companies work out. As you pointed out, most don't. But investment banking and a entrepreneurship are possibly two means of achieving the same end, depending on the goals and desired lifestyle of the subject in question.
Well put, DCD. For anyone that thinks Mark Zuckerberg is anything more than some ivy league schmuck who got lucky, you can keep reading these article till you are blue in the face. Honestly, I am one of the people who finds working in high-finance to be inherently interesting but would also love the risk and potential rewards of a start-up. Why do I stay in IB, other than the fact that I really like finance? Because I get a steady paycheck twice a month and a nice bonus in February.
Nice write-up
People certainly underestimate the role of chance in business, and life more broadly.
Just curious what industry you were in?
I for one applaud you having a crack at your own gig, takes balls, and I'm sorry to hear it didn't work out the way you had hoped. I have to disagree on the luck part though, I can't help but believe people make their own luck, yes there are many variables we cannot control, but I do believe if you really want something bad enough you will find a way to make it work, you've just really got to want it
Naive article. I could say "Why be a boring corporate exec when you could be a millionaire movie star/athlete/rockstar"?
We're all playing the odds and making safe choices.
I think if you go back and re-read the original post, I'm not saying to be a millionaire rockstar at all. In fact, that is the entire point of the post (which, due to your feedback makes me think I might need to re-write it more clearly - so thank you), that you don't need to be that millionaire to have autonomy over your life.
There are people out there who would choose a quarter million in income for working half the hours of someone netting one million. I"m not making a value judgment on which is better, but proposing there are multiple ways to skin a cat.
To channel my Chinese surroundings a bit here and paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, "It doesn't matter if that cat is white or black as long as it can catch mice."
New Yorker article...seriously...I like my information aggregated and well structured in ppt
Those service industries where you know people who delegate work and have an easy life spent a solid decade after school doing long hours of bitch work and studying for exams (e.g. CPA, MAI, bar, etc.), and then another half decade or a decade building their client base. They didn't just decide one day to opt for leisure over hard work. My head is about to explode listening to this worthless bullshit.
That's the problem with most users on this website. We think way til black and white and have one track mindsets. We only think in traditional, safe and well known tracks. I know plenty of people with client based businesses who worked and learned the biz under someone or a few years and then found their own clients.
It requires a little courage and some know how. Seems pointless at times to debate this point on here so I'll just leave it at that.
Cue IP's citing the usual stat of 0 correlation b/t happiness and money beyond $80k/yr
I think you guys might be missing the point a bit. It's not an either/or proposition. Being financially autonomous does not require starting a company and booking 80 hours a week for yourself these days.
More than half the battle is keeping your expenses down. So you live in a cool place with a low cost of living (for me that place is New Orleans because it checks a lot of lifestyle boxes that appeal to me, YMMV) and you find something you enjoy doing that pays well on a freelance basis. Believe me when I tell you that it isn't difficult to make a grand a week online without ever leaving your house or answering to a boss.
I'm in a little different situation because I made my nut so long ago, but even I pick up freelance accounting and consulting work from time to time. There's so much of it out there it's ridiculous. If you're looking to make $50-100,000 a month from home like Pat Flynn then, yeah, you're gonna bust your ass for 8-10 hours a day, maybe more. But if you're just looking to work 20-30 hours a week and make a grand or $1,500, that's easily doable.
Yea that's my end goal with that Treehouse site that you posted several months ago. I've made decent progress in Ruby and already have a solid foundation in HTML/CSS so I'm hoping to turn that into an additional income generator soon.
The funny thing is that some people here, @"Aaron Burr" included, think that 8-10 hours a day is basically retired.
Oh New Yorker magazine, how i've missed your obsessive, navel-gazing ways...
Great discussion all around.
@DCDepository glad to hear your quality if life has improved, you've been there, done that and it's good for a lot of us dreamers to hear.
I'm not trying to be Elon Musk, but along the lines Eddie mentioned, pull in a few grand here and there (btw nice shout out to Pat Flynn, seems like a good dude).
As for "how much is enough?" Well, ask Conan the Barbarian what is good in life, that's what I want.
I'd say once you amass anything above ten bajillion dollars you're just engaging in meaningless exercise of self-idolation.
Personally, the number I'd like to reach in my career is $250K/yr. I have no logic behind it other than saying you made quarter of $1M last year sounds nice.
this just examines the two fields from one perspective, money. A lot of people go into business for the power, safety, opportunity to meet people, reputation, etc.
If you take someone that has the skills, desire, and luck to successfully run a small business, and put them in a Wall Street investment bank, you would have just quadrupled their income, and taken almost all the risk out of their life.
Starting a business is, statistically speaking, the absolute worst investment you could possibly make, bar none.
The essence of the article is that freedom and flexibility trump income more and more nowadays. This theme has been talked about on WSO with people choosing boutique firms for the work life balance or choosing houston over NYC because of the COL.
IMO, unless you are working 100 hours a week everyone should be trying to start some side gig. If you have a FT job and an education you can afford to start and fail at stuff while maintaining the steady paycheck.
Utter BS. Of course, in a sense, you are right; Zuckerberg might not be a billionaire today without his timing and positioning. In another sense - that of blaming "luck" instead of seeing the specific patterns of thought that leads these people to be successful - you are very wrong.
Every man is born with a set of competitive advantages that has allowed his genes to survive through millenia of Darwinist elimination. Did your father charm your mother into sleeping with him, leaving you an only child in the suburbs of a Midwest town? Chances are you might be an excellent salesman. Part of life is to move around learning, until you find what you are good at, and then things take off. Facebook is a magnificent company (even if I do not agree with its valuation). Zuckerberg did find a gold mine by solving a problem he was facing, but the real achievement is how a young, inexperienced programmer and project manager somehow turned it into the most popular service in the world after Google, and what is increasingly becoming the hottest place to do research in. At every step he took the right decisions and this allowed Facebook to become, well, Facebook instead of another Bebo or whatever one-shot success is now sunk well in the depths of the past. The same is true of Steve Jobs - on the face of it, you can hardly call him lucky, it was almost as if every factor in the world was against him, including getting fired from his very own company. He bounced back time and time again, just in different directions.
You make your own luck. There are thousands of opportunities lying around at any point. If your friend had not made a fortune in real estate, chances are he might have moved to Asia and made a fortune in the bubble there, or maybe traded commodities. I've found that with every bubble there is a class of savvy traders who move "where the money is". Look at where MBA classes want to go, at the moment Silicon Valley instead of Wall Street. At the end of the day just find out what your strengths are, and monetize them.
The one thing I did learn is that it doesn't often happen in your 20s. See: https://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/What-do-people-in-Silicon-Valley-p…
and: http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html about a series of patterns of behaviour you should adopt, such as: work on small problems, be aware that knowledge compounds, move close to where the smart people are.
I'm glad we're talking about Mark Zuckerberg and facebook since he's probably the best case study in luck. How was facebook started? Zuckerberg was being an immature dick and created a crappy little site for Harvard students to anonymously rate people's physical attractiveness without the consent of the people being rated. This site was so popular that it expanded rapidly and it became thefacebook.com. It beat out the myriad of other social media sites because of its simple layout and lack of ads and malware. If Zuckerberg had been, say, 3 years older and more mature it's unlikely that he would have been such a jerk. I know I was a complete jerk when I was 19-years-old, too. My being a dick just didn't happen to come with a website.
To think of Zuckerberg as anything other than a smart guy who got lucky with an idea is to give him far too much credit. That's not to say he didn't earn his money or that he should be taxed at arbitrary and punitive rates. I'm just pointing out the obvious--timing plays a major part in one's success. When passions meet at the right time in the market is when you are most likely to be successful. Drop Bill Gates into 1875 and he would not have become a transcendent success, not because he's dumb, but because his passion for computers is what drove his success.
Let me add an example from my own experience. My family and I develop real estate. It takes a lot of planning, good execution, calculated risk and some GOOD LUCK to do well. We did a project that was completed in 2010. When we sold it we ended up barely breaking even. Why? The market turned against us in the specific submarket we were building in. Then in 2012 we finished another project--a very similar one--and made a killing. We made so much money that it made up 4 or 5 times for the previous failure. Why was it so successful? The market turned in our favor. Nothing special about me.
Success in business takes hard work, good execution and LUCK. You cannot deny the role of luck in business. I don't know of many entrepreneurs that would attribute all their success to their own hard work or intelligence. There are a lot of smart and hardworking people out there. People can get lucky in lots of ways in business--primary competitor dies; Fed cuts interest rates; Fed raises interest rates; you win a contract in a highly competitive, evenly split race; you meet a guy in a bar who wants to invest in your idea, etc.
Getting the timing wrong by ignoring macro factors is getting a business decision wrong, I'm sorry. The successful real estate investors I know buy low and sell high, and a large part of their success is their ability to see what others don't see yet, particularly future economic development of an area (e.g. Texas post-crisis) or an upcoming bubble bursting. This is not just true of RE but all asset classes; I've seen two kinds of commodity traders when I was still at a physical shop: one that got the macro right, and made money on the way up, and on the way down; one that bought the BS about it being a paradigm change, and getting killed on the way down (thereby cancelling any hope of a bonus end of year). The ratio as with everything in life was 20/80%. I moved to Asia because I saw Europe and the US as doomed for the next decade, and indeed whilst I am having loads of fun building cool stuff with way more responsibility than I would get in Europe, my former classmates are stagnating and not making very much money despite their prestigious positions at JPM, GS, McK or elsewhere.
I've known plenty of people who built moderately successful Facebook type sites, with no ads and a good interface. It was the combination of systematic good decision making (potentially because he A/B tested ideas, who knows) and very good hiring, that led to Facebook's success. He also was very good at picking his investors; someone like Thiel is enormously more value adding than a standard SV VC (Google made the same right choices in their growth period). eBay is a great example of a company that made wrong choice after wrong choice once they had grown, they even managed to destroy PayPal's future as THE payments company. But it's hard to appreciate all this unless you work in the industry. Facebook has exceptional hiring and culture, and right now is more competitive than Google for the top minds (e.g. Simon Marlow, and Guido von Rossum, both gods of their respective languages, just joined). He merely used the dating site as his "small problem" from which he built a "big solution" or whatever you want to call it.
The key is that you make your own luck, either by being careful about macro factors instead of blindly trusting your own experience alone (there were CDO squared in the 1920s too - check out Galbraith's book on the Crash), and iterating through choices that expose you to things outside your box that eventually lead to connections that may appear like luck. For example I recently accepted a conference invite in a field I had no clue about and little interest, and slept during most of the presentations, thinking it was a waste of my time. Then I gave a talk on what I'm doing, and it turned out a bunch of people from all over the world saw a fit with their own companies and offered me 3x what I am making to do it at their place instead (and I may take them up if I fail here). Is it luck to have "randomly met those people at a conference"? I could have turned it down and "worked hard" for those two days, I just thought the possibility of the unknown had more potential (like a somewhat OTM option). Another one: I read a book on special forces because a friend recommended it, then used the principles in it to select technical people even though I had no clue about their actual programming prowess. Turns out that was the right way to go and my team is 30x faster than a standard development team for the same project, with enough reputation that we don't bother using agents or posting job ads for new programmers. Luck?
I'll add that Zuckerberg is NOT a jerk despite the best attempts at the Social Network to describe him as such (source: friends who met him, people who work for him) much as Thiel is a warm and inspiring guy in real life; secondly, Bill Gates in 1875 would have become a steel or railway tycoon. Maybe, maybe not. But there's a good chance he might have. He has the right qualities for it - extraordinary work ethic, an ability to see trends ahead of others, excellent negotiation skills (including the balls to take big risks), great reading of his competitors, and very high persistence.
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