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Comment by alttab | Hacker News Reader

Amazing to hear the numbers. I'll file this one under ifart and question my career again. I can has breakdown.

Creativity comes in all flavors. Someone creates a Jump-to-Conclusion mat and makes a million while someone spends their entire life working on elliptic curves to improve cryptography. Get-rich-quick stories entice even the most brilliant of the minds and we're no different. A story about some kid making $35k/month from a stupid app for iPhone makes people wonder why they even bother learning Clojure or spending hours improving their writing skills. The truth is, you must ask yourself what will make you truly happy - being the developer of a gimmick app that made money or someone who has directly contributed to the world with their efforts.

Upon hearing the above, many have said "well, once you have lots of money, say like the reddit guys, you can spend your time doing what you love and help the world." No. The reddit guys WERE doing what they loved and would have done what they're now doing regardless of the money. Sure, having money like Elon Musk helps but then again, it may not. If you hate your career now, get the ball rolling to change it. If you are happy with it, who cares if someone else made millions sharing pictures of cats? I mean do you feel bad that someone in India made $10m selling a special type of plastic sheet to farmers? Or someone in South Africa made millions selling vuvuzelas?

If your ultimate goal is to make money, then certainly wonder if you chose the right career. Money laundering or even investment banking might be a better path. Otherwise, realize the money is just a serendipitous by-product of any venture.

The money made by icanhazcheezburger was not "the serendipitous by-product of any venture". A guy bought the site from someone else with the intention of making money off of it.

Getting rich selling plastic sheets to indian farmers does not bother most hackers because it's completely outside of their domain. Building a website or iFart app is not.

Maybe I should have used a different word. I meant you cannot predict if a venture will make money or not.

"Or someone in South Africa made millions selling vuvuzelas?"

If I ever find that guy, he's in for a world of pain.

The Vuvuzela (TM) maker was once a small startup that won an entrepreneurship competition and got help from an incubator: http://www.fin24.com/Companies/SAB-moves-to-protect-vuvuzela...

I have mixed emotions about this one, for sure.

Got-rich-quick stories aren't bad because you'd be unhappy to be wealthy by getting lucky off of a silly idea, they're bad because most people just aren't going to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Instead, most people have to work hard doing things like learning Clojure or improving their writing skills in order to produce a product that society really wants.

I'm not exactly an objective observer (I'm one of the ~40 that works for Cheezburger) but I think the comparison to ifart is a little unfair.

It's not all Lolcats, you know. Take a look through the >50 sites and if you can't find something that makes you laugh, you should see your doctor. Seriously

http://cheezburger.com/sites/

It is iFart, you just diversify your comedy portfolio!

>Cheezburger now has more than 40 employees and has not sought additional investment.

[Teal'c voice]: Indeed.

It makes sense though. You're essentially allowing your user-base to feed itself - they generate the content and then consume the content. Nobody knows what the audience wants better than the audience themselves.

Wow... a lot of responses. I guess I forgot the "</sarcasm>".

All great points though, nothing I don't already agree with.

iFart? My category is called "We Think Too Hard"

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