You do not make real money in finance, in my view
Hi guys, I would like to hear your thoughts on a topic that I have struggled to figure out over the last months.
I have always wanted to break into the private equity industry. As everyone knows, there is a kind of prestige in working in PE and the salary is pretty good. Of course there are many other positive aspects, especially the fact that you are in an environment of strong learning (I will not list all the really deep pros of this industry, but there are many beyond money and prestige).
Since I joined the PE team in my current job, I have visualized myself as a future MD making tons of money and being responsible for huge PE funds. That was my target so far.
However, over the last months I have had contact with some really rich families via some friends. They live a life that was quite unimagined by me. For example: they have several nice houses spread over the country and Europe. They have a pretty nice yacht (+10MM USD), and they eventually take their helicopter to make the day a day easier.
Additionally, a recent conversation with my girlfriend, who works at a big wealth management firm, has given me a lot to think about. She commented that the net worth of successful entrepreneurs is infinitely higher than successful CEOs. (of course this is quite an obvious point, but I don’t think I have ever really thought about it…)
Given all this context, here are my considerations: If you want to make tons of money, the finance area is not the best place. Of course you will be able to make A LOT of money, but the super rich people (those that you have no idea of what their day a day looks like) did not make their money working in finance. My thought is that you can become really rich by working in finance, however, this might be really small when compared to those who really made money.
Do you guys agree with those thoughts?
Correct in a narrow sense, but you're missing the point:
If you want a better shot at being private-jet, yacht, etc. level of rich, yes, found a company, assuming you have the requisite skills to make a product, hire a team, fundraise, and all that. But if you want the strongest odds of being able to afford a nice house, nice car, private school for your kids, etc. without needing to possess any super rare talent or advanced coding/engineering skills, and you specifically want to avoid spending years of your life working on something that goes to zero, PE (and finance in general) is a much safer bet. Risk-adjusted returns are important!
I strongly disagree with this, tbh. After 3 years of working with founder-owned businesses, lot of non-tech founders - who are worth 9 figures - are in my experience not much more intelligent than the average successful career person. And tech founders can often fall into this bucket as well. IMO, success in entrepreneurship is far more frequently due to a combination of risk bearing personality x opportunity x luck. Most PE people are just very risk averse, see the binary outcome model from entrepreneurship, and say no thank you.
I 100% agree with this as well. This sub is too hyper focused on risk averse paths to success to see any alternatives. I’ve been working with startup entrepreneurs my whole career and let’s get it straight - it’s not easy by any means but people on WSO think you have to be some genius CS wizard to build a good tech product. Nowadays with AI, it’s easier than ever.
Also, the main comment ignores the large majority of people that are entrepreneurs in non-tech industries.
that's not true at all, you have to compare with F500 CEO/founders or people like Steve Jobs Elon Musk when you compare to PE MDs (top top in the finance league), not random non-tech start-up founders to PE MDs, and the former is definitely way smarter than the latter. also people like Jensen Huang benefits way more people/employees than PE MDs.
Literally nobody here is talking about Steve Jobs or Jensen Huang
Elon Musk is a literal retard so not sure what your point is
i personally have seen random founder of a 7M revenue company getting acquired for $50M+, this level of payout/net worth is comparable to an average MD at a LMM or MM PE firm. Your comparison of steve jobs to an average partner or MD in PE is baseless and laughable. at least you gotta compare stave jobs to the founders of KKR, blackstone, etc.
Fair take. Maybe "intelligence" in terms of raw intellectual horsepower isn't the right way to frame it. And I agree that my second bullet point is stronger than my first - it's largely about risk tolerance. But beyond risk tolerance, it's absolutely the case that being a successful entrepreneur takes a broader skillset, more adaptability, and greater willingness to own every aspect of a process. I see that as a different type of intelligence than e.g. standardized test scores or GPA, which of course PE people have in spades because IB/PE recruiters use these as a filter. But PE folks are often delegating many of the details of QOE/other diligence to consultants, legal doc drafting to lawyers, transaction structuring to accountants, etc, while entrepreneurs, at least at the earliest stages, have to be in the weeds on all this stuff in order to succeed.
In my experience (although limited) many of the founders I’ve worked with are not actually that great at running their businesses. And when the business scales past the point of effective micromanagement combined with the fact that money is no longer free really struggle hard and seem way less and less like geniuses and actually their cavalier attitude ends up being more of a detriment to growth.
i swear i see one of these every few months. it is well known that finance is the best RISK-ADJUSTED avenue to become wealthy
What is the math behind this assumption ? What are you using for risk ? Please show the calculations.
go outside + walk around = touch grass
respectfully, are you not capable of thinking for yourself?
Title says intern but comment says retard, what gives WSO
.
Elite entrepreneurs and high finance employees are 2 different beasts generally. Finance tends to attract cookie-cutter professionals who follow a rigid, predictable path starting around age 14. They prioritize high school grades, achieve strong SAT and ACT scores, gain admission to reputable colleges, maintain excellent GPAs, and adhere strictly to established norms. These individuals work extremely hard and put in long hours throughout their careers within predefined boundaries. However, they often lack the entrepreneurial drive, risk-taking ability, and sales skills that are essential for building successful businesses.
Bingo. Difference is not in intelligence. It's about the risk appetite.
True you should recruit for entrepreneurship instead
It depends what that industry the entrepreneur is in. If he built and scaled some shampoo company to billions, i would rather be in finance. However, if it is an actual [sexy/important] industry, that's a different story.
You have no clue lol. I wouldn't give two sh** if I have a million $ company that produces shampoos or "something sexy".
As intern you will soon realize that finance is also not sexy when even the most senior MDs are actually the most observant/simp like in front of any senior client whereas the business owner reigns his own little empire.
$ is $ so why care what industry it was in
I think there is a vast, vast disconnection between "elite" professional-service careers expectation and reality. This applies to banking/consulting/law and also to some extent PE (even though PE is not professional services but attracts the same folks).
The lifestyle which is expected particularly in finance through movies of a long gone past (i.e., supercars, mansions, wild parties) never have pictured M&A/PE anyway but mostly trading/brokerages where a few outliers really became insanely wealthy pre 2008.
Nowadays all of these sectors are extremely commotitized. If you want to earn decent $ in any professional services / PE you will spend the majority of your life under constant pressure and always on stakeholder demands (be it LPs or clients) for laughable pay/WLB ratio.
And yes you are right. Generational wealth trumps everything. And I am not even talking about the super-elite/rich founding families of BN dollar companies.
Heck even SMEs with 30-40 employees. I have friends of such families who live in large houses, have nice cars, vacations (nothing over the top) but a TREMENDOUSLY better lifestyle than the PE VP / MBB principal who is working 6 days a week and living in a large COL city in a medium sized appartment.
Congrats, you have understood basic capitalism - those who own assets outclass those who work for those who own assets.
You basically just said that 1% entrepreneurs make more money than people with a day job. No disrespect but duh...You either own it or work for the people who own it. People get into finance because it's safer and more comfortable than trying to be the next Elon Musk.
Correction: you do not make real money in Brazil.
not unless you're a petrobras shareholder
In Brazil you actually make more adjusted for purchase power than in the US if you go the high finance path. A BB director in Brazil is basically rich, the same guys when they transfer to NY complain that their purchasing power was much bigger in Brazil.
The equivalent of those entrepreneurs in PE are fund founders or group heads at large megafunds, who are worth just as much as those entrepreneurs and spent every year of their career being paid extremely well. Of course if you look at the top 20 billionaires list or whatever it'll be dominated by tech entrepreneurs but that is not a career outcome you should be solving for at all.
Your perspective may be skewed as well due to your geography. Plenty of uber rich people (to the scale you are speaking about) in the US working in finance/corporate.
okay forget about PE/tech founders, you can count all the numbers of MF PE principals making close to $1M a year, but can you count the number of basic SWEs/PMs at Nvidia/Meta/Google/etc who's been with the company for more than 7 years and making ~$700K a year
lol people like to use a few wildly successful startups as case studies and forget that the majority fail
Actually, my point is the opposite of what you said.
There are small and medium business owners who make a lot of money.
You don’t need to be in tech or AI, or build the next Amazon, to reach there.
Owning your own business can bring you similar wealth than working in finance. Plus, you're not capped. If your business does really well, your earnings can scale.
The trade-off is the risk, as some have commented here. However, I fell like this risk is way lower than the most people think.
High finance offers (in my opinion) the best risk adjusted path to becoming moderately-very wealthy (depending on your definition). There are many MD/partners who are moderately smart, moderately sociable and just never did anything to "rock the boat" who make 7 figures. Is $1 mm a year pretax going to be enough to get a yacht or helicopter? No, it won't be, but it can afford an extremely comfortable lifestyle and the reality is that once you make it in the industry, it really isn't particularly hard to not get fired and eventually get promoted to a level where you are making top tier money. My last point would be that for every centimillionaire tech founder, there are likely at least 100 others who barely made a dime from their company.
They are two completely different personality types. By the time you're a mid-teen, you will know which one you are. Those in PE like to follow a very structured path (2+2+2) and got great grades in high school and undergrad. Entrepreneurship is a different type of personality. You usually don't like structured environments and put little emphasis on traditional benchmarks like school, GPA, etc, and are a self-taught person.
Risk is also viewed differently by the two. Those with jobs think it's less risky since you get a constant paycheck and are building a career but from personal experience, many entrepreneurs I know say that they think being an entrepreneur is less risky since they are in control of their infrastructure, eg you get to control how much risk your business takes, how much you pay yourself, and so on. Whereas in PE you are at the whim of the firm and something not in your control like your firm not being able to raise a new fund in a few years could mean you lose your job.
TDLR both have different personalities and different ways of viewing risk (each thinks what they do has less risk).
How many people start a business? How many of those people have the wealth you think is "real money" or "tons of money?"
How many people work an IB/PE/VC/etc job? How many of these people have the wealth you think is "real money" or "tons of money?"
Enough PE partners, HF analysts/PMs with $50-100MM (with outliers for certain MM PMs or SM Partners) plus by 40 that invalidates this view, no?
How many PE partners have even $50m by 40? I would wager none unless they started their own fund in their 20s and had astounding success (ie they were entrepreneurs).
Um yeah you are in for a lot of disappointment if you think PE is going to give you 50-100m at 40
One of my friends who is 10 years older took over his dad's regional towing business outside of a major city in the west coast and won business against a large insurance provider. They sold to PE. Then he invested in oil fields in the midwest when prices were cheap. He sold a couple once those went up in price when the market recovered. Most recently he invested alongside 2 other business partners in a hot chicken franchise that now has 30+ locations mostly in the west coast and they got recapped by a growth equity franchise PE shop. Now he bought a house in Europe, has many exotic cars, a beautiful wife and a child on the way. Life has more possibility than we think sometimes.
There is risk associated with that. There is not a lot of risk associated with joining Evercore and working for 15 years
Yeah but one outcome is cool and the other is depressing
Yea there is risk and his risk was mitigated because his dad established a foundation for him to build on and he worked for the business for 10 years before taking over. Sitting at your desk for 15 years at Evercore relatively sounds quite sad & boring, but I get that it is a lower risk path to wealth
You'd be surprised. I'd invite you all who think finance is a fantastic and fairly linear risk adjusted path to look at say Evercore's analyst class of 2010 and what most are doing now. Could be quite illuminating.
It’s mind blowing to me that there are people in this industry that do not understand the concept of risk-adjusted outcomes.
Very simple - imagine this scenario:
- Option #1: You push a button and there is 90% chance to get ~$3 million. Not an amount where you can buy a private plane but certainly attainable with good expected value + risk adjusted return (this the IB/PE ppl)
- Option #2: You push a button and there is 10% chance to get +$30 million. Enough money to spend during your life time when invested correctly. This is the entrepreneurship / HF route.
Mathematically speaking, the expected value of both options is ~$3m, but people prefer each option differently given their risk appetite. Risk adverse people prefer option #1. People who view risk differently or do not have much to lose go for option #2. Different strokes for different folks.
I agree with this take on risk-adjusted returns, but (for the sake of discussion) I think most people here ignore the process to get there.
As someone leaving IB/Finance to return to entrepreneurship, I realized it's not just about the money but most importantly the journey to get there. For me at least, it's way more interesting learning how to make a website look nice, how to run ads campaigns, establish relationships with suppliers, etc. than being in the office +90hs per week preparing materials for +USDXBn transactions (which makes me feel depressed).
I think anyone wondering what path to take shouldn't focus so much on the result and more on the journey to get there. If you spent 15 years feeling like a slave in finance or unable to sleep because you are afraid your business will go under (or unmotivated because you feel you need to deal with dumb people/ your product is boring), then whatever result you get won't be worth it.
Just my take as someone going the startup path - there are other considerations, but this one was more related to your comment :)
The EV of option 1 is 2.7mm
Like people with enough of a financial cushion and/or family support choose option #2 as well.
So, you were satisfied with your path, until you met someone richer than you? Comparison is the thief of joy. There is always someone making more money than you.
Finance is probably still the best risk-adjusted way to make money. Sure, you are unlikely to make 'yacht' money, but you are almost certain to make enough money to go from 0 net worth to 1-3m by retirement while having a great lifestyle with holidays etc. Think of it like a t-bill - fixed coupon, low chance of failure, but limited upside.
That's a brilliant analogy
$1M today will be worth less than half in 30 years, assuming low inflation. Usually in that scenario, pay increases won't fully compensate for inflation, so IB salaries continuing to trend down..
Usually, copying something (an idea, a career path) from others won't lead to the same result (read wealth), just my two cents
Why is everyone in this thread setting the base-case net worth at retirement of working in finance at around 1-3m? Your 401k alone should be significantly higher than that by retirement, even using modest projected returns and adjusted for future inflation. With other investments and home equity included it seems like just about anyone starting a career in finance should have a net worth of 5-10m at retirement, potentially much higher if you have "high finance" comp for most of your career.
This is a very doable savings trajectory for someone making decent comp:
Using a net rate of return of 5% to account for future inflation this gets a net worth of 10m by retirement, not even counting home equity and other assets. Assuming decent total comp of 400k+ by around age 30 this is super doable, especially considering 8k/mo in investments would be low for those late in their career.
For a credit boi you're not really considering the downside case here. That is that most people spin-out of high paying finance jobs and into 9-5 pseudo-finance / CorpDev / IR / CFO etc for half (or less than half) the comp. The point is that starting in IBD or equivalent role, at the very least, you will end up with 1m. Ofc if you get to VP at a investment bank by 28 or move to the buyside and start minting carry you will be significantly wealthier by retirement but this is an unlikely best case for most An1s.
Yes, I believe this is the concept of risk / reward.
If you are bothered that your current career path can only make you $10 million instead of $100 million, you probably have a meaning of life issue versus a career choice issue.
Would work on the former rather than trying to figure out how to make a $100 million.
Any billionaire probably doesn’t consider someone with $100M to have real money. What’s your point?
Being a founder of anything is risky. It may or not work out. You rarely see all the stories of the failures.
I think the average NW of someone in the 1% is something like $10 or $12M, if memory serves. I’d say if you can cut it, plenty of people will make it to that point in this industry, while living a comfortable lifestyle getting there. I can’t think of too many other professions that do that. I gather you don’t think that’s enough money, but I think statistically you are setting yourself up for severe disappointment.
If you want to make it to $100M, fewer people do. They founded successful firms. So they took start up risk just like the rest. Just a different industry.
It’s real. It’s accepted everywhere they accept money.
Odd. They won’t accept $50 DAW as a tip…
Who cares?
Guess it doesn’t matter whether finance vs. entrepreneurship if you’re saying things like “day a day”…
As someone more experienced, I’d say getting to $100m NW working in finance, while certainly not base case, isn’t that rare of an outcome either.
Only extreme outliers achieve that by age 40. But getting there by age 50 is possible for lifelong consistent performers in PE and non-founder successful HF PMs.
We haven't even had a full generation of PE/HF so I would be more hesitant extrapolating in the future what some people achieved in the finance heydays
You’re not accounting for how hard and challenging entrepreneurship can be. The best case scenario in entrepreneurship can be higher than finance but on average, finance has more reliable outcomes.
I generally agree with the broader point. Sometimes I think it may be easier to roll up some industrial services business and flip it in 3 -5 years for a $10m windfall than it is to grind it out in PE. I've seen some crazy stuff that really made me go "if he/she can do that, so can I"
That said, run the compounding math on $1m per year gross income and you can get to a $100m figure by late 60s pretty clearly. Sooner with carry.
Not much point getting there in late 60s though. Having wealth early is a huge advantage vs having it late.
Right on. Just meant if you interpolate those results you can see a path to $10m+ in your 40s. That just about puts you in the top 1% of wealth.
Without saying, having more money younger is clearly more exciting, which I why I mostly agree with OPs point: you're only going to be able to achieve that type of wealth earlier if you choose the entrepreneurial path.
Who's working in PE until their late 60's and hasn't quit or been pushed out yet? The people that can pull that off are usually founders of firms (ie entrepreneurs), with the younger generation of partners having shouldered most of the workload a decade prior.
I hear you. And it is firm dependent. But even founders and managing partners eventually retire and need to leave the firm to somebody. And to your point, if you've gotten there you are probably making much more than $1m per year.
I guess all I am saying is that if you are still in the game in your 40s, you're likely making around 7 figures annually with meaningful upside. That is much better than just about any job I can think of that doesn't involve starting your own thing.
I think most people have a fairly black and white view of entrepreneurship vs. PE / finance - i.e. starting a company is risky with uncertain risk reward and PE investing is not risky / best risk-adjusted returns. It's ultimately much more nuanced than that.
For reference, I worked in BB IB and MF PE, and was extended an offer to stay at my firm / got into one of H/S, and chose to start a company instead (venture-backed).
Agree with the general discourse on the forum, but few unstructured thoughts below:
This is really helpful. I'm in a similar position (former PE associate about to start b school thinking about entrepreneurship. Could I DM you by any chance?
Great write up! Would you mind PMing, or un-anon your account so I can get in contact?
Would be really interested to hear exactly how you chose the specific area to start your company in and any more details if you'd be open to sharing!
Sure PM'd you. Can PM others to chat if you go off anon
Still Finance careers offer the highest expected value in terms of income/wealth (look at the entrepreuners graveyard instead of only quoting some of those who made it big). Plus it is (almost) accessible for everybody, no matter your background. Part of the truth is also that most big TECH founders would have not achieved anything if it wasn't for their family/wealth background.
I know many founders / serial entrepreneurs:
- The amount of failed companies is an interesting figure. Almost no one has a home run with their first venture. It could be the fifth attempt or much more. Getting there is incredibly hard.
- Luck plays a role also, there are so many companies out there and the vast majority won't make it. Not because the people aren't smart or the idea has no merit. You can do everything right and the startup might fail anyway.
- I haven't met any founders who started their company "instead of a career in IB". different lifestyles. the "average" finance bro isn't the "average" entrepreneur.
Second year owning a lifestyle business here and I used to work in finance so I thought I'll chime in. I think the math people do when looking at finance vs. entrepreneurship risk adjusted return is at best murky.
Most companies are not venture backed and of the bootstrapped ones many will be cash flow positive in the first year. Or put simply - you can choose to start/buy a business that is fully CF positive if not day 1 then very early on. So it's not some crazy odds or risk you need to overcome. You can explore multiple concepts if you are starting on your own in low barrier to entry type companies (e.g. consumer products or services or even a lot of saas) and sure while a few concepts you try might fail, you only need ONE to work half well to be free. By free I mean 1-2MM EBITDA, 10M+ NW in 10 years which for most people in H/MCOL with family is plenty. I'd argue it's easier to achieve than become a partner at some MM fund in your forties. Here's why.
The biggest thing that nobody tells you about business vs. career is that whatever you build in business - process, customer lists, product reviews, social media presence etc. it all compounds and gets easier to do over time. You are literally building an asset for yourself. This cannot be overestimated not just from a money but also time standpoint. I work less and stress less than I did last January, but have done 10x in sales so far. Why? Because I have processes in place, sales funnel and I've built a smooth little money making machine for myself. Should it fail? Can probably spin up another concept much quicker than first time around.
The opposite is true for a career. The higher up you go the harder it gets. You are assigned more "people problems" and pesky tasks that the owner can't automate or assign to a junior employee. More targets that are related to business metrics but a lot of it ultimately outside your control. Assigned a sh*tty coverage or some macro slump. Tough luck, you still need to deploy or close. Remember you're competing for that promotion. You have to wrangle more with politics and the pyramid steepens and is hardly meritocratic once you get close to the top. You get 20% pay rises or extra bonus for 50% more work or stress. Even if you're incredibly talented your career might just become collateral damage in some political feud or if you work for a larger org you are one RIF away that simply impacted all of your group and had nothing to do with your performance.
When owning a business on the other hand... You hire career people to solve your problems. Your main job is to motivate them, have them fight over each other for a bonus or a promotion that's probably a percent (if that) of your P&L and identify problems with the business while they are still small. 99% of the time if you've set it up right you can mold your schedule however you like. Yes, it's more responsibility but you also have 100% agency over your future.
Remember, unlike in IB/PE you are not competing with people who overcame 1/1000 kind of competition and then more as some go up and the rest go "out", but with the other 999 people out of which some just shrugged and said "can't find a job let me take over my dad's business". Which is to say if you have it half together and are motivated you are already ahead when competing with other SMEs in not overly saturated niches. I've looked at other businesses to acquire and how inefficiently they're often run really surprises me to this date. If you're doing finance now you can already calculate your unit economics so can figure out when/how to scale, probably won't go into a sh*tty business in the first place, have the work ethic, understand the tax/accounting aspects quite a bit already and so on. In short, you are quite unlikely to be persistently in the broke business owner category for too long.
Finally, a few people already remarked that few people make it to 60 or even 40 in the industry because they are pushed out. Nobody can fire me out of my business except myself. And I am the last person to go. If I get tired of the business and say it's making a modest 1MM EBITDA (very small for a company!) I can sell it at a multiple or hire someone to run it for me. Or grow it bigger to make more/get richer or start a new one if I feel this one is tapped out. You can't do any of that with your job.
The biggest downside is of course that it's not "prestigious". But for most people in their thirties with families who have played the prestige game at some point and won.. it becomes less about prestige and more about time and money. It won't make you venture backed IPO money as a founder.. but I'm pretty sure most people would be more than content to end up with low 7 fig income / 8 fig NW while in much better control of their time than your typical PE partner.
I actually find it way more prestigious to own your own business... (But also don't live in the states, maybe "prestige" is not as important here.)
as far as absolute net worth...you're right. entrepreneurship, and more specifically equity ownership, is the path to wealth creation. But what's really under discussed is the risk of starting a business and the difficulty. Starting a successful business isn't structured like a finance career. There's no AN->AS->VP etc.
You deliver value to customers uniquely and generate equity value. Starting a company can takes years of unpaid/low paid work and tons of uncertainty. If you fail, everyone thinks you're an idiot and you'll have to explain it to all your future employers and family members. Believe me, it is anxiety inducing.
Additionally, entrepreneurs are very strong lateral thinkers rather than process oriented investors. Lateral thinking is not a muscle strengthened in traditional corporate jobs. You have to be able to identify opportunities that no one else is seeing...and then execute on them!
However, if you understand all of the above and still believe in the problem and solution that you're trying to solve...go for it. Finance is a great path to make a lot of money and have status...but is that all life is about?
There are more rich employees in finance. That's kind of the appeal.
I’m 45 and in banking not PE and while successful enough financially, nothing special (not a well known name or anything). I’m sitting at 25mm today and just on comp / compounding should be at 50 at 50 and 100 at 55. Where I go from there depends on how much I want to work.
I’ll probably end up short of PJ territory but it’s not bad for a poor immigrant who started out with nothing and risked nothing, and my kids have every tool to become billionaires themselves. I don’t even work that hard at this point, mainly golf and dinners with clients:
Didn’t you say in another thread that you were worth $30-$35m?
I’m feeling less bullish today on my startup investments
25mm at 45? Seems high for an IB MD... Hard to believe if you're making 1-2mm a year. Are you just extremely well payed or crazy returns on investments?
I’ve averaged 5+ a year for the last 7 years. My investments have actually been crap. Should have just put money in the S&P.
Real wealth comes from building a business and owning its equity. The difference between a billionaire founder and an MF partner is simple: the founder is an entrepreneur, while the partner is an employee.
You are so driven by greed its crazy. A lot of you live a very shallow life.
You clearly have not tried to raise a family in NY or SF. Getting “rich” is the minimum required to even have a family comfortable here.
Weird post. What is ‘real money’? In PE, If you’re good at your job and at a successful fund, you can live a pretty lucrative lifestyle.
As with investing though, there’s way more upside in your career if you’re willing to take more risk. Successful entrepreneurs, sales dudes, or even life insurance agents can out earn traditional finance jobs because you’re often rewarded for bearing the risk of your own comp.
If that excites you, then yeah, go do that. All of these threads about selecting a career path by optimizing comp are so fucking lame.
Sales dudes or insurance agents “don’t bear the risk of their own comp.” They’re employees too with some upside to their comp, but that’s no different than any investor.
Depends on the comp structure. Plenty of those earn more through commission than salary.
Decreasing marginal utility given wealth, we are all risk averse. Higher EV path in finance anyways.
You are ignoring a lot here. First of all, F500 CEOs make like, 20m+ a year. Do you have any idea how big your company needs to be to make more than that as a founder? You'd need to get incredibly lucky with your business to get to that. Most entrepeneurs aren't so successful.
Second, most of those Tech founders only got there due to family conections and wealth, if you are not born rich the chances of your own business failling or not making that much money is huge.
....
What do you think "real money" is?
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Laboriosam asperiores deserunt sed aut nobis blanditiis. Maiores qui perferendis consequatur. Nulla impedit quo reprehenderit deleniti aperiam aut mollitia vero. Non quas non necessitatibus nobis sed asperiores enim.
Voluptas nesciunt nobis sit blanditiis incidunt nihil quisquam. Nam et et perferendis. Dolor et cum nulla nihil. Quam eaque dolores quasi et id voluptatem adipisci.
Porro sapiente voluptatibus beatae architecto culpa amet. Asperiores expedita labore necessitatibus fuga veniam reprehenderit est cupiditate. Sapiente alias ad incidunt fugiat soluta optio.