How to make a quick million?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7710673

9 7 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

First of all I would like to thank the contributors of this website for being very credible and thoroughly comprehensive in many aspects. Which is why I am asking for your help and advice for the following questions. These may seem juvenile however I feel like I am at a crucial point in my life and wish to make the best of my time. My background:US citizen.HS graduate(if that even matters) I have now finished taking a C++ course and will join a .Net or Java course, then go more advanced in whichever field. Right now I have about 1 year before my college starts(I've taken a year off after highschool since I was put in a gifted program and skipped a grade). I am planning on getting bs in Computer Science and minor in Mathematics. My question is the following: If I want to make a very high salary, what would be the best process... As in after college or during college where should I apply or what more academics should I pursue. Relocation after college is not a problem. It's not about the salary(cliche)but about being a leading expert in the field. *This may seem very abstract and immature, as well as missing lots of holes, but like all of us I wish to utilize my time efficiently and become the best at what I pursue. Please give some in depth details.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 12 years ago

Forget college.

Learn everything you can about sales and marketing. Find something to sell. Sell it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

nighthawk24• 12 years ago

+1 Find someone who has a real problem which can be solved with tech and who is ready to pay for the solution, build an easy to use solution which solves the problem, profit.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 12 years ago

I specifically avoided mentioning building anything for a reason.

The OP was concerned with making money as a priority. Building things is a distraction; selling isn't.

dandrews• 12 years ago

Do not forget college. Your high school experience was all mind-numbingly homogeneous, everybody took the same classes, followed the same curriculum, had to pass the same standardized tests.

Go to college and sample a variety of disciplines. Make acquaintances of people from different fields. Concentrate on your own studies, but hang with a diverse crowd. It isn't high school anymore.

I grok your mercenary prime directive, and readily admit that a college diploma isn't an automatic meal ticket. But you'll be better for the experience, and if you learn for pleasure a well-chosen college can be a three-or-four year Candyland.

angersock• 12 years ago

This...

If I want to make a very high salary, what would be the best process...

...doesn't jive with this...

Relocation after college is not a problem. It's not about the salary(cliche)but about being a leading expert in the field.

If you want to become an expert in something that'll last a long time, consider academia or niche security work or something. If you want to become rich, go into finance or investing or medicine or try the startup casino.

Regardless of which you choose, learn how to write more clearly--your post could benefit from better spacing and being broken out into multiple paragraphs.

Oh, and one more thing. Don't confuse the tools for the product for the skill: nobody cares too much if you use Java or C# or C++ or whatever to accomplish your goals, so don't get hung up on that.

Also, do try and spend some time in college socializing, drinking, getting laid, and learning about people; you don't want to end up a monkish developer until you've seen what you'd be passing up.

AnimalMuppet• 12 years ago

How do you make a quick million? You start with two million.

That is: Trying to make money fast usually means that you lose money fast.

To actually succeed at making money fast, you have to build something that a lot of people want, and that you can rapidly scale up. The best you can do now is put yourself in a position where you bump into problems that might fit that, and people who can help you get to a solution. The people you are most likely to find at college. The problems... you may find them by keeping your eyes open.

lifeofanalysis• 12 years ago

Let me answer the question you asked, and, then the question that you did not ask.

The fastest and dependably assured way to make a million dollars to build a product/service that is profitable and sell it. If you can project annual profits of more than $100K, you can sell it for a million dollars. Want concrete examples:

- There is this guy who provides "Text Messaging" service to his B2B customers. So, he will go to your local gas station, ask them to sign up their customers' telephone numbers, then sends texts to their signed up customers with their coupon special on non-busy times like "20% off on oil change on wednesday before lunch". These coupons get pretty good response. If you use Twilio, it costs $1 to send 100 coupons. So he charges them $30/Month to send out 4 texts to 100 customers. Net profit: $26/month per customer. Spend this year, and, go around within your 30 mile radius, sign up a bunch of businesses and get rich.

- This guy built a profitable business in a very unsexy category: maidsinblack.com. He writes about it on Reddit sometimes. Check it out.

- A guy places, seriously, mylar balloons at flower shops, hospital shops, etc. And takes a cut of the sales. Makes $60K a year.

Ok. So now the question that you did not ask: to college or not to college.

I know there is an opinion floating around that in this age of easily accessible self learning, you can skip college. Here is the thing though: to be a successful business owner/manager, you have to make a lot of decisions. And that means a lot of analysis, data etc. Intuition/gut-check helps; but analysis is the foundation that can not be taken away. So working backwards from this, to do/understand analysis, you have to be pretty good at unsexy things like Math, Logical Reasoning, Model Building. Now, you can learn all that on your own. But will you have the self-discipline to do it on your own -- or will the structure/rigor of a college (even evening courses at a community college) be a better way?

Sometimes when you look around, you think people like Bezos just sit in meetings and make decisions while someone else does the analysis and presents them with alternatives. That could not be further from the truth; to make good decisions, 1-2 big ones and 10-20 small ones every day, you have to be able to quickly understand the "insides" of an analysis -- and for that you can not avoid at least the foundations of an numbers based education. And, don't forget, there was a time not too long ago (1995?) when Bezos went around looking for money for his start-up; he did all that analysis/projections all by himself. It doesn't hurt your persuasion skills if you are good with numbers and can counter with numbers when they have objections.

How to make a quick million?

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