Lucky bu88ers!

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

From this thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=1232081#p1232081)
his particular profession (broker) makes him $$$$$.

Here's a thing that I have thought about from time to time. If you hear an entrepreneur like Richard Branson describe his path to the financial bigtime, it can seem like every decision was the smart move of someone who knew what he was doing and sheer talent would get him to the top.

But, if you give 1,000 random bozos $10,000 each and ask them to run a business basing their major decisions on the roll of a die, I would suggest that even if 990 lose all the money, 9 might do quite well and 1 might make millions.

Has it been investigated to see whether wealthy people have a genuine talent for business or have just been lucky?

Perhaps the 'talent' is a refusal to give up when things go wrong, bearing in mind that eventual success still does not prove that anything other than random factors have been at play. For every millionaire who tells us that dogged persistence paid in the end, there are 99 who did simply go broke.

As some slight evidence for my "random acts of management" theory of entrepreneurship is the existence of high-profile stories of sudden success turning to disaster when a new the magic touch seems to leave the entrepreneur, whereas I would suggest there was no magic touch, the luck simply turned.

The same principles would apply to many spheres of life where the power of retrospect confers the title of genius on someone. Take the exmaple of military successes. When one hears the relatively fine margins that seem to have dictated the outcome events one wonders whether it was me luck than judgement.

All history is victors' history. No one wants to read 999 stories of failure or meagre persistence.

[tkingdoll]

Richard Branson went bankrupt several times before he found success.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Richard Branson went bankrupt several times before he found success.

He might claim to have had the talent to succeed by learning from failure, but it could be blinkered persistence + dumb luck.

[CBL4]

I think that some companies set up lots of small mutual funds on this principal. Start with 100 funds, get rid of half them each year. After a few years, you have some extremely well performing funds by random chance.

But for people getting rich, I do not think it is true. To be a successful enterpeneur certain things are extremely helpful:
1) Dedication and hard work.
2) Charisma
3) Organizational skills
4) Ability to choose people to work with
5) Good ideas or the ability to evaluate ideas.
6) Risk taking
7) Bullheadedness
etc.

The average Joe will not become an entrepeneural millionaire because he is not willing to sacrifice his family, his house, his health, his time, his friends, etc in order to become a millionaire. Of course, there is a lot of luck which determines whcih people with the right characteristics succeed or not.

Also, one you have one success, the subsequent ones are easier. Banks are more willing to lend to you. It is easy to find top notch employees. People take your harebrained ideas seriously.

I had a friend who had a good business idea. Unfortunately, it required about $5 million in equipment. There was no was that anyone would give this 25 year old guy that kind of money.

CBL

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

To be a successful enterpeneur certain things are extremely helpful:
1) Dedication and hard work.
2) Charisma
3) Organizational skills
4) Ability to choose people to work with
5) Good ideas or the ability to evaluate ideas.
6) Risk taking
7) Bullheadedness
etc.


It is true that this is asserted. But it is this I am questioning.


The average Joe will not become an entrepeneural millionaire because he is not willing to sacrifice his family, his house, his health, his time, his friends, etc in order to become a millionaire.

That is, I think, true. Many of us would not become entrepreneurs because we would not want what it takes to be one.

[Soapy Sam]

If you are at all interested in the history of personal computing, I suggest reading "Accidental Empires", by Robert X. Cringely. It's about how some people got very rich by selling smart ideas and how others did not.

You've heard of the global megacorporation Seattle Software, right?

They wrote the 16 bit version of CP/M that Bill Gates bought , rebadged as MSDOS and licensed to IBM for the first PC.

How Bill Gates conned IBM into licensing a 16 bit OS he did not yet own is one of those pivotal moments in history.
If Dr. Gary Kildall, who wrote CP/M at Intel, had not taken a flying lesson the day the IBM accountants came calling, would PCs run CP/M to this day? Would Microsoft be more than a programming language vendor? And what of Paul Allen- was he just in the right place at the right time?

I dunno. Some folk succeed in business because they have good ideas. Others succeed by finding the good ideas and selling them. Gates was never the software king that Kapor or Kildall were, or the hardware guru that Jobs was, but he wanted to be rich and he knew how to do it.

[luchog]

I dunno. Some folk succeed in business because they have good ideas. Others succeed by finding the good ideas and selling them. Gates was never the software king that Kapor or Kildall were, or the hardware guru that Jobs was, but he wanted to be rich and he knew how to do it.
Gates also had a bit of the "right place, right time" factor going for him; as well as one advantage that almost no other business of it's kind has ever had -- access to some 500 pound gorilla legal muscle when they were barely a start-up business (his father's law firm, one of the biggest and most prestigious firms in the Northwest). It was that last factor that really got him started. It enabled him to take what was essentially a piece of free software (a BASIC interpreter), make some minor modifications, sell it, and most important, prevent anyone else from doing the same thing. That gave him the base from which to work, and the background to quash claims that his obtaining of the DOS which he sold to IBM was not entirely legal and above-board.

[CBL4]

Gates is also an incredibly driven, power hungry, greedy jerk with little regard for business ethics and immense business skills. As Soapy Sam indicated, he had guts to make a ridiculous business deal with the biggest computer company in the world.

I am sure he would have become a successful businessman regardless of the PC situation. Probably not a billionaire but still a multimillionaire.

CBL

[YoPopa]

There seems to be an assumption that only getting rich equals success for an entrepreneur. I consider myself a successful entrepreneur and I doubt that I am ever going to be rich. I have the love and respect of a great wife and two adult sons. I work for myself, when I want and where I want. I work a lot of hours but I am never "dog tired" at the end of the day. Those are my greatest claims to success but I can also say that we pay our way and are almost debt free.

My business is smaller than most and most businesses are small to begin with. Why is top of the heap $ wealth considered the sole measure of success? I have a theory about the answer to that question but I'd like to hear if any others, especially Badly Shaved Monkey care to opine.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Those are my greatest claims to success but I can also say that we pay our way and are almost debt free.

I agree that there are better ways to measure a happy life than just wealth. Indeed, given what it takes to acquire great wealth in business happiness and wealth might even be inversely correlated- or maybe that's just what we non-wealthy folks like to tell ourselves.


Why is top of the heap $ wealth considered the sole measure of success? I have a theory about the answer to that question but I'd like to hear if any others, especially Badly Shaved Monkey care to opine.

I suspect that it is because many people are unhappy anyway and focus on "if only I had more money" as a solution or even just a dream to take them out of there present state.

One of theh problems of acquiring money is doubtless, as Alain de Botton recently wrote in connectionn to holiday-making, when you travel, whatever exotic location you reach, you've still got yourself with you.

Generally, I'm with Slartibartfast, just insert "wealthy" for "right":

Slartibartfast: I'd rather be happy than right any day.

Arthur: And are you?

Slartibartfast: (Pause). Well, no. That's where it all falls down, of course.

[luchog]

One of theh problems of acquiring money is doubtless, as Alain de Botton recently wrote in connectionn to holiday-making, when you travel, whatever exotic location you reach, you've still got yourself with you.
"Just remember, no matter where you go, there you are."

[CBL4]

originally posted by YoPapa
There seems to be an assumption that only getting rich equals success for an entrepreneur.I agree that getting rich is not equal to personal success but when I say entrepeneur then wealth is the main goal.

I am a moderately successful entrepeneur but it has reduced my personal success to moderately unsuccessful. Fortunately, everyone involved agrees that we need to mostly give up because the personal cost is too high. If I were a driven entrepeneur, I would be more financially successful. As it is, I will walk away with a fair amount of money in my pocket but my hope of retiring at a young age is gone.

CBL

[Matabiri]

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
- Churchill

I think that some companies set up lots of small mutual funds on this principal. Start with 100 funds, get rid of half them each year. After a few years, you have some extremely well performing funds by random chance.

There's also an old scam in which you set up a company offering gambling advice, claiming, "If you're wrong, we'll give your subscription money back!" You coax in a high number of people, and give advice on binary outcomes, like football games. You give out the advice randomly - i.e. you tell person A that team C will win, while telling person B that team D will wil, etc. After every match, you apologise to and refund the ~50% of your clientele that you gave wrong predictions to.

After a while, you have a small group of customers remaining who are convinced that all your predictions are correct. At this point you offer them, for a large fee, the "secret, real money-making predictions". Then you take the money and run.

[Mojo]

Sounds like a variation of the "I guarantee that your child will be a son or your money back" scam.

[Starthinker]

But, if you give 1,000 random bozos $10,000 each and ask them to run a business basing their major decisions on the roll of a die, I would suggest that even if 990 lose all the money, 9 might do quite well and 1 might make millions.

Where do I sign up for this $10,000?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Where do I sign up for this $10,000?

1. Are you random?

2. Are you a bozo?

3. I don't have the money, bozo! Oh, that's answered question 2.

:)

[Starthinker]

1. Are you random?

2. Are you a bozo?

3. I don't have the money, bozo! Oh, that's answered question 2.

:)

Give me a second, I can make myself random.