[chadillac]

What, you don't have all night jam sessions at your 3 bedroom house in San Fran? Just picking yourself up by your bootstraps, struggling to make it, in your 3 bedroom house in San Fran. You know, down in the much and the mire, busting out LoC tirelessly while worrying about how you're gonna keep the lights on, in your 3 bedroom house in San Fran...

This reminds me when I asked a person who is now a "worlds youngest self made billionaire" club member how they possibly built paid their bills while in the early phases of their startup, that time when you're too small to even consider funding, but big enough to warrant a couple hires to help lay a foundation. The reply, "Ha! [founder's name]'s family is loaded...".

That's when I realized I had worked on the underlying skills, I had ideas, but I missed the most important part... money and/or rich friends.

[puranjay]

This is true for many entrepreneurs. Evan Spiegel's dad is a rich lawyer, as is Mark Zuckerberg's and Bill Gates'

Travis doesn't fall in this category though. He got his 3 bedroom house with his own money

[arbuge]

I believe Mark Zuckerberg's father is a dentist.

[presty]

and his mom is a psychiatrist, so they're both "doctors" http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-dentist-dad-...

[sinzone]

Travis bought his house after selling RedSwoosh and being for 4 years without salary. He deserves every penny of it.

[sabalaba]

There are plenty of reasonably priced apartments outside of SF and Palo Alto. It means you might need to live in the east bay or somewhere less expensive south of the city but it's possible and maybe necessary in the early days.

[elcct]

That means first you have to get rich and then work on the skills

[chadillac]

If only I'd known sooner, now I'm just over here with a bunch of computer and development knowledge... I should have just studied money.

[MagnumOpus]

It's a feasible strategy - there are thousands of entrepreneurs who did just that: do an MSc/PhD in Finance/Economics (or these days just any old STEM subject), join a bank's trading floor or a big investment company, put aside 2-3 million in 10-15 years - then get out of the rat race and create a start-up or become an angel investor.

Of course there's ten times more people who inherit a million or two of seed capital instead...

[dylanjermiah]

"I should have just studied money."

People buy things which make their life better than it was before they bought the product or service. The magnitude is not important. You now know 'money', if you have the dev knowledge GO BUILD SOMETHING OF VALUE!