Ask News.YC: What would you do if you were a billionaire?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79057

by trekker7 • 19 years ago

5 30 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Let's say someone gave you $1 billion tomorrow. After 2 - 3 years of being rich, what do you see yourself doing on a day-to-day basis?

amichail• 19 years ago

You might consider giving it away to charities and keeping just enough for your financial independence (5 million say). You might be able to preserve your privacy that way.

adrianwaj2• 19 years ago

Charities often give less than 5% to the end recipients and then bank or invest the rest.

MisterMerkin2• 19 years ago

Fuck giving it away to charity. Just start your own.

rms2• 19 years ago

Fund scientific research at a laboratory I direct with my business partner Josh. I think we could knock off a few major diseases like AIDS, or maybe get bacteria effectively generating energy.

To cure HIV (idea is Josh's): Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. Introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.

To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.

fauigerzigerk2• 19 years ago

If that actually works it's a shame that it depends on you becoming a billionaire first. Can it not work the other way around?

rms2• 19 years ago

It could, but we still need the money to hire teams of PhDs. It's unfortunately not the kind of thing we can do in someone's basement.

edw519• 19 years ago

You need a billion dollars to "knock off AIDS"?

Here comes the bargain of the century...

How to Knock Off AIDS (for free):

Whether or not you're already infected with HIV:

- eat only healthy foods (limit animal protein, refined carbohydrates, and saturated fat)

- exercise every day

- have a bright outlook

- have meaningful work

- don't smoke or take drugs

- treat others the way you'd like to be treated

- make all your variable names meaningful

And, just in case, if you're not already infected with HIV:

- keep your zipper up (unless you're with your other half)

kyro• 19 years ago

I'd head straight to the Wendy's value menu.

myoung8• 19 years ago

Starting another company. It's about the thrill of the chase.

adrianwaj2• 19 years ago

Doing things that test and develop my positive personal traits, and then sharing that journey and those discoveries with others.

mattmaroon• 19 years ago

I'll tell you what I'd do, man, two chicks at the same time, man. Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had a million dollars I could hook that up, cause chicks dig a dude with money.

All office space quoting aside, if my startup IPOs I'm buying a winery in Napa, preferably Stags Leap district, and a house in the hills of St. Helena with enough land to let my dogs run free and terrorize the neighbors.

And I'll probably jump into the restaurant industry.

jgrahamc2• 19 years ago

On the 'two chicks' thing, there's no need to be a billionaire for that. There are plenty of countries where prostitution is legal and you could do two chicks.

John.

MisterMerkin2• 19 years ago

What an appropriate name..

eugenejen• 19 years ago

That's why Europe, hmm, even Canada is better than U.S.

trekker7• 19 years ago

For me: Travel a lot and get good at photography, buy a Ferrari and get into amateur racing, start a venture capital firm to fund social entrepreneurs (don't know if this is possible yet), own and run a cool new restaurant, be a director/writer for some independent films, do something to make in-class education more fun for high school students (possibly using software).

mxh• 19 years ago

Two possibilities:

a.) Physics. Always found it interesting, but not into academia as a way to pay the bills.

b.) Feeling poor compared to those bastards with 11 figure net worths.

fauigerzigerk2• 19 years ago

I'd finally create the fgPhone. You may now speculate about how it will purge the world of all phone carriers and generally redefine telecommunication as we know it. How it works? Well, I'd make the ISO, the W3C and the JCP join forces to create the mother of all committees...

pistoriusp• 19 years ago

Pay off all my family members debt. Setup a trust to provide my family members with reasonable salaries. Just enough to let them do what they want, but not enough that they don't have to work. Buy a giant piece of land and move my parent's and their families on to the same property, if they want too... Go to university. Setup a decent course in South Africa to teach kids about programming. Get that silver Porsche 911 that I've always wanted. Go to my old work, in my new Porsche, and show it to my ex-boss. Fund something to fight crime in South Africa.

kirse• 19 years ago

Well I'm posting on YC right now, so I guess that's one.

I'd give it away creatively, always wanted to throw money to the wind in a crowded city street.

That and fund domestic programs to help encourage the success of our next generation of kids.

brianmckenzie• 19 years ago

Step One: Construct a giant concrete sarcophagus similar to the contraption they used to seal off Chernobyl.

Step Two: Hire a reliable private investigator to ascertain the location of the target: Creed's rehearsal space.

Step Three: Fill the sarcophagus with alligators, poop, and diseased ferrets.

Step Four: Rent several hundred industrial-grade helicopters and lower the sarcophagus onto the target.

Step Five: Construct a monument honoring the heroism of the alligators and diseased ferrets.

gstar• 19 years ago

Brilliant.

I'd throw in another 2bil if you can knock off Maroon 5 and Nickelback at the same time?

Get your people to fax my people.

sutro• 18 years ago

I happened across this nearly year-old comment surfing the backwaters of HN. It is a true classic. Oh how I wish I could award more than a single karma point.

wlievens• 19 years ago

Invest it to grow to sixty billion and use it to build a space elevator, duh.

asmosoinio• 19 years ago

At least for a while: Not have anything to do with computers. No looking at a monitor.

What I would do? Snowboard & learn to surf. Paint.

pg• 19 years ago

Day to day? Much the same thing, actually.

brlewis• 19 years ago

Such speculation is counterproductive.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=74030

runningskull• 19 years ago

Never work again (unless I absolutely wanted to, for pure fun and challenge). Invest half (maybe some in startups?). Buy a sizable, but comfortable, house on top of a remote mountain in Montana or Colorado, and use it as my headquarters as I trek across the world.

But, some amount of time into my aimless wandering, I would no doubt get the itch again, and have to start creating something.

ig1• 18 years ago

Do social entrepreneurships stuff. My two main ideas are creating an mturk for non-profits (allow micro-contributions of time/work to charity) and create a careers guidance website that doesn't suck.

I realize I could do these now, but trying to juggle full-time job + part-time startups + current non-profit work + real-life is hard enough already without adding more stuff to it.

Ask News.YC: What would you do if you were a billionaire?

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