Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

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.<p>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.

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?<p>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.

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.

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>That's what being an entrepreneur is all about. It's the diligent pulling of the slot machine with the lower mean.[2]<p>[1] Fogel, et. al., "Do Evolutionary Processes Minimize Expected Losses?" <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.8.8219&#38;rep=rep1&#38;type=pdf" rel="nofollow">http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.8.8...</a> [PDF]<p>[2] Everything after footnote 1 is pure opinion and based on only my own intuition. :)

An interesting article that talks about an entire nation's views on marriage, status, and success is: <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-06/25/content_10018557.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-06/25/content_1001855...</a><p>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."<p>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.

For both wealth and (perceived) beauty, there is often a relatively easy solution: move!<p>For more beauty, move to a location with a greater ratio of the opposite sex.<p>For more wealth, move to a location with a lower cost of living.<p>I don't know how much longer these arbitrage opportunities will exist, but for now they probably represent the biggest 'lifehacks' one can make.

Well, there's also the issue that the economy refuses to provide honest reliable jobs for honest reliable people...<p>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...<p>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.

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

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.

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.<p>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.<p>And we'll see what happens next.

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.

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?<p>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.

she's neither male nor rich so her advice is bogus.<p>there are some things that are just true - all other things being equal women prefer men with money.<p>Even when all other things are not quite equal women prefer men with money.<p>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.<p>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.

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.

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.

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.<p>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.

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

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.

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."

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.

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

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

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.

<i>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.” </i><p>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.

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

...unless <i>you're</i> not okay with it.

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

... "as long as <i>I</i> do"

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

<i>The cake is a lie</i><p>;)

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