[nerdsniper]

Wow. Quotes like these really illustrate to me that I may have some massive blind spots and lack a lot of skills that help make people lots of money. This fellow is worth $3 billion and just spouts gibberish.

What skills does he have that I completely lack?

[somenameforme]

I think the skill most people lack is just initiative and risk tolerance. Behind many, if not most, highly successful people, there's often a story of them just trying lots of stuff until something sticks. I have a pack of a few friends who have been doing this for years. I think most of their ideas are pretty awful, but who knows, maybe one day they'll be right?

Even this site is maybe a good example. You can apply to YCombinator with little more than a partner, plan, and pitch. The worst that happens is they say no, and if they say yes then you get a $500k funded shot at your idea with lots of advice on top and people trying to help you succeed. Yeah the chances of acceptance are low, but if you've ever read applications for pretty much anything, a ridiculous amount are just complete garbage, so your chances are better than the numbers suggest if you're halfway competent.

[slumberlust]

Wait, are you saying my jeans with reinforced kevlar crotches won't take off!? Blasphemy; I'll never give up on Crotchstrong.

[throw0101a]

> I think the skill most people lack is just initiative and risk tolerance. Behind many, if not most, highly successful people, there's often a story of them just trying lots of stuff until something sticks.

Also remember survivorship bias: lots of folks with "initiative and [high?] risk tolerance" fail, but you may not hear about them.

Obligatory:

* https://xkcd.com/1827/

[somenameforme]

I don't think most fail is the right word. Because for instance appealing to my personal anecdote of my friend pack of serial entrepreneurs, they're mostly making beer money from their projects.

If you clocked the hours they spent and compared it to a decent consulting fee then yeah - they're losing lots of money. But in reality they're doing that stuff during the time that most of us are shit posting, browsing the web, playing games, and so on. And so if you compare it to that, they're making a hefty chunk of change with the upside that they do have a chance, whatever it may be, of something really sticking and that being their to the Moon project. And you know, even just getting to the atmosphere is enough for a life changing result.

Or getting back to the Y Combinator thing. It costs $0 to apply, and the worst that happens is that they say no. All it takes is giving up a bit of time off our shitposting time. But that's somehow not an offer many of us are willing to accept, which is really pretty weird if you think about it!

[terminalshort]

This is correct. HN is full of people making mid 6 figures that can't seem to get over the idea that people making 7 figures or more are doing it unfairly just because those people aren't scaled up versions of themselves. You don't have to be smarter than a good engineer to be a good founder or CEO because it's fundamentally a different skill set and risk tolerance. They latch onto single cases of fraud and generalize it to all rich people because it is convenient. Of course theft and fraud occurs at all levels on the org chart, but it doesn't make the news when some IC steals a couple hundred K from his company.

[zamadatix]

There are plenty of fair points many would find uncomfortable trying to accept from above, particularly around how much risk is sensible to take and deal with. Hell, even knowing and believing people tend to undervalue risk... I still don't think I take enough risk myself.

At the same time, I think going from mid-6 to 7 figure income is a lot less controversial than 10 figure net worth. It's still unlikely to be related to whether someone is a scaled up version of another, but at what point you consider the reasons for earning that much "fair" tend to go a lot deeper than plain fraud.

[justinbaker84]

The people who succeed the most with fraud are those who tell lies that people want to believe. A LOT of people wanted to believe that there could be a second electric car company and that they could get rich off it. That is why the fraud worked so well.

[skippyboxedhero]

AI is the same. I am pretty sure at any company you have executives saying things about AI that not only aren't true, they can never be true. However, this is the story that people are willing to believe.

Also, just generally, the question is wrong. Perpetrating a massive fraud is very time-consuming and, ultimately, requires a level of self-deception that most people don't have the energy for. Milton, SBF, etc. did the things they did because they wanted to believe they were someone other than who they were. There is nothing wrong with knowing who you are and just being that person. To say this another way, Milton was clearly unwell, he is now unwell with more money than can be actually used, being unwell is not an example for anyone particularly when you trade it for something with extremely limited marginal value.

[throw0101a]

> The people who succeed the most with fraud are those who tell lies that people want to believe.

Jason Zweig:

    There are three ways to make a living:
        1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
        2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
        3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.

* https://jasonzweig.com/three-ways-to-get-paid/

[terminalshort]

A difference in skill level is not a difference in morality. Nobody is out there only scamming people out of thousands because they have a moral objection to taking millions.

[whatevertrevor]

It also goes hand in hand with people undervaluing the act of taking on risk in the first place. Hence overbeaten cliches like "insurance is a scam"/"stock market is just gambling" etc.

(Don't get me wrong there are systemic issues with both of the examples above, but the point is fundamentally there's value in understanding and taking on risks that others might be less willing to take)

[cogman10]

Usually rich parents.

That said, looks like this guy is actually more of a "self made man" as he started several businesses out of college with moderate success. The first was an alarm company (Spoiler, those are generally MLMs and there's 100 of them). Looks like he was just successful enough at it.

It's not shocking to me that someone who starts an MLM ends up in trouble with the SEC.

[xnx]

> It's not shocking to me that someone who starts an MLM

And it's not shocking that someone from Utah starts an MLM. MLM and other scams seem to be the main industry in Utah.

[rhcom2]

Along with soda shops and cookie companies.

A non-snarky comment is in my experience the LDS church puts a great deal of emphasis on entrepreneurship, wealth, and "excellence in all things" that leads some to do great things and others to shamelessly steal and cheat.

[skippyboxedhero]

Fraud is an essential subcomponent of entrepreneurship. You cannot have one without the other. If I am trying to get you to invest in something, you have to swap cash today for a vague promise about the future.

This does not make it less wrong but fraud is essential.

[lotsofpulp]

Your definition of fraud is nonsense.

> wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain

There is no reason entrepreneurship has to involve deception.

[terminalshort]

Beats the hell out of the "everybody successful got there by luck and/or being a bad person" attitude around here, that's for damn sure.

[tptacek]

Poetry. The ability to be awed by the wonders all around him, and to transmit that awe to others. A true communion with the fantastical.

[0_____0]

I think this is perhaps one factor that feeds into the "reality distortion field" I have seen around particular leaders. You don't feel like they're trying to goad you into seeing it their way, you just sort of naturally start to believe in their project (their? is our project, comrade!).

[kridsdale3]

Charisma (or Riz, now, I guess) is just a naturally in-built trait in some segment of the population. We evolved to be collective and cooperative by following leaders. We have never had a meritocratic or scientific system for choosing who to follow.

[whatevertrevor]

I do agree with your conclusion, but I'd add that charisma is also very much learned, like a lot of other traits. Lots of trials at seeing what people respond to and honing in on what works, weeding out what doesn't and if you're in the serial entrepreneur/cult leader business: an ever evolving language of sophistry that keeps up with the baseline level of critical thought, but also weeds out actual skeptics quickly because you don't want them around your followers.

[0_____0]

I think it's important to point out that even extremely intelligent and talented individuals can lack critical scepticism when deciding to follow a leader or stay with a particular project. I've seen so much human energy and engineering talent go into a business that everyone should have known, didn't have organization, strategy, or actual leadership to build real product and be a viable business.

[whatevertrevor]

I agree very much!

A lot of smart people get woo-ed by bad pitches or wrapped up in cults too. It's all about how the message is coded for the target audience. An astute MLM seller uses very different language to sell to a small farmer vs a young silicon valley graduate[1]. There's also the aspect of how vulnerable the audience is at that point in their lives, cults are especially good (bad?) at finding people in tumultuous periods in their lives, looking for any sort of hope and/or support system to pull them through it. Then the cult provides the community and short-term structure they crave at the time, to their long-term detriment.

Personally, how relatively smart and even generally skeptical people fall for cults and conspiracy theories is one of the most fascinating sociological phenomena out there.

[1] leaning somewhat on general stereotypes for the sake of argument, not insinuating all these people are the same, or implying anything about the relative intelligence of a farmer vs a silicon valley graduate.

[takinola]

This is not even a joke.

[maxbond]

Maybe what you have that Milton lacks is integrity.

[kolbe]

Nearly all people value good articulation over intelligence. This is why people who interview well get jobs over people who do good work. It's why Steve Jobs makes billions while Woz doesn't. And why Trevor Milton can bilk investors of claims about HTML5 supercomputers while nerds get brushed off talking about tensor-chip accelerated attention models.

The truly great founders, CEOs, and investors of our generation have generally been people who could see the difference between articulate and intelligent, and valued intelligence as the driving characteristic of people who built their products.

[dylan604]

> It's why Steve Jobs makes billions while Woz doesn't.

I'm going to have to disagree. There are many things that make the two Steves different. Woz was just never interested in the same things Jobs was. Woz wanted to make cool shit. Jobs wanted to have his products rule the world.

[kadushka]

Woz did make billions though

[HWR_14]

He didn't. First, he gave away a good chunk to early employees who didn't have stock when the IPO happened. Then, he liquidated his Apple in the mid-1980s.

He certainly could have made billions if he had been greedy (not given any away) and lazy (just lived off the dividends and never sold) and never done another thing in his life - more billions than Bezos.

[kibwen]

> What skills does he have that I completely lack?

As George Carlin would say, it's a big club, and you ain't in it.

[quickthrowman]

> What skills does he have that I completely lack?

1. The ability to lie shamelessly.

2. Charisma.

3. Confidence.

The last two (or all three, really) can be combined into ‘salesmanship’, more or less.

[lstodd]

IMO it all combines into confidence. Which you can't project so to say if you can not make yourself believe in your own lies for a moment, and charisma is just another name for confidence. Or hutzpah for that matter.

Key point is to not let yourself forget what is that you're doing: manipulating people. Or in other words, don't forget that there is such thing as reality. Many fell into this one trap.

[yard2010]

I want to add from my own experience, he doesn't have to be accountable for anything. This post supports it.

[basch]

Conviction is a good combination of the last two. Or to cover it all

Shameless Conviction.

[itsoktocry]

>What skills does he have that I completely lack?

You'd be amazed how "successful" one can be if willing to lie, cheat and/or steal.

[candlemas]

He doesn't have a conscience.

[SilverbeardUnix]

You have ethics and the ability to feel shame.

[sneilan1]

It's not skills that got him ahead. It's the connections to the "right" people that can be benefit him the most.

[wrs]

Google "dark triad".

[vkou]

> What skills does he have that I completely lack?

It does not take any special skills to do this. All it takes is having no integrity.

[kaptainscarlet]

It's not a lack of integrity. Such people actually believe their own bs. They are functional schizophrenics.

[cheema33]

> What skills does he have that I completely lack?

The ability to tell tall tales that are completely disconnected from reality. And be able to do so with utter confidence.

[taneliv]

Did you just describe LLMs?

[yard2010]

LLM is just a statistical model representing the average human writing shit on the internet, so same same?

[rasengan]

Either corruption was always happening maximally, and we've finally begun to notice , or corruption has reached a new maximum.

Either way, it's maximum corruption.

And we, the people, continue to choose "public discourse" as a mechanism to bring awareness and, perhaps, attend to the issue; yet, the discourse available to the people is limited, both economically and even in social media, algorithmically.

I hate to sound like a decentralization fanatic, but decentralizing power away from centralized actors is the only way we will be able to right these wrongs and essentially bring fairness to society.

We, the people, deserve to reap rewards based on skill and the proper application thereof.

[terminalshort]

We are much closer to zero corruption than maximum corruption. How many times have you bribed a public official in your life? In many places it is considered a routine part of navigating bureaucracy.

And if you think decentralization brings fairness I suggest you visit some of the more decentralized parts of the world. Decentralization can solve some problems, but that's not one of them.

[lostmsu]

Is your tongue smooth?

[paulpauper]

need to get me one of these HTML 5 supercomputers

[terminalshort]

Sales

[Terr_]

https://xkcd.com/1827/