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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. Who were the 59 from finance?

I didn't write them all down because that would have taken another hour and it's 11 PM Bay time on a Friday, but here are a few:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Simons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schwarzman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paulson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Och

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_A._Cohen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_C._Griffin

If you're curious as to whether I included any specific people please feel free to ask.

You can apparently filter the results by the industry (from one of your own links), and here's a direct link as concerns the finance industry: http://www.forbes.com/lists/results.jhtml?passListId=54&...

I'm curious what your test was for deciding whether someone was in finance.

Here are the industries I considered to be "finance":

- Hedge funds and other money management

- Private equity

- Investment banking

- Leveraged buyouts

- Proprietary trading

- Traditional (retail) banking and credit cards

I did not consider heirs with investments to have gotten their money in finance, unless they increased their original sum ten-fold or more (in real dollars). I also did not consider real estate investment/speculation to be finance.

Sounds reasonable. But when you have time it would be useful to see the actual lists of the people you put in each category.

Since the ecosystem of non-bootstrapped startups combine founders and financiers, where do you draw the line? VC firms seem squarely in the financier camp, and founders who do not contribute capital are not, but angels and incubators are more difficult. An honest classification attempt would attribute some of their equity to capital and some to work contribution, but even when there is currently a stable valuation available to calculate the capital contribution to an equity grant, the numbers are often uncertain guesses.

apsec112: I see your reply, but it is [dead]

I actually counted VCs as having made their money from technology rather than finance

You know my next question then: what is the financier/founder ratio if you consider VCs to be financiers?

Real estate probably should be considered finance, making money in real estate is all about having access to the proper financing.

Just fyi, every person you listed above founded the financial company that made them rich. So they are founders and did do a startup - just not a technology startup.

How are you defining "startup"? "Startup" for most people has technology connotations. To quote PG:

"Startups are a comparatively new phenomenon. Fairchild Semiconductor is considered the first VC-backed startup, and they were founded in 1959, less than fifty years ago."

Clearly, he's referring to tech startups specifically. If you consider any small company that becomes big a startup, then Rockefeller and Carnegie made their wealth in startups.

I can't imagine describing either Renaissance (founded by Simon) or DE Shaw as anything but tech companies. They use technology as a competitive advantage in investments, much like Amazon uses technology as it's competitive advantage in retail.

But that's not quite accurate.

You see, while these guys are in Finance, at least 1/3rd of the above have serious hacking skills, not traditional finance skills;

  James Simons - math, but closer to hacker than financier
  Kenneth Griffin - was financial hacker , not a dealmaker
  DE Shaw - another hacker, a computer scientist/compbio

None of the above except Shaw are technology people. Simons is a mathematician, and Griffin seems to have a pure finance background:

"While still at Harvard University, he started two funds from his dorm room, and he claims that in between classes he would make trades. He even installed a special satellite link to his dorm to acquire real-time market data. After graduating with a degree in economics, he won the attention of an investor named Frank C. Meyer, founder of Glenwood Capital [1]. Meyer was amazed at Griffin's success and rate of return with his investments (which at the time were largely based on convertible bonds), and provided a relatively small investment for Griffin to invest ($1 million) [2]. Griffin exceeded Meyer's expectations, and as word of his strong performance spread, investors persuaded to back Griffin. Citadel was officially founded Nov. 1, 1990 with $4.2 million; the name "Citadel" was chosen to suggest strength in times of volatility [3]." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_C._Griffin

James Simons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Simons) was a mathematician who founded Renaissance Technologies a HFT (High-freq. trading) hedge fund. A lot more of a tech company than a finance company I would say.

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