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Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

This story makes guys like Zuck and Gates seem extraordinary. They didn't' set out just to be rich or even rich-enough, they're aiming to change the world. The former is still working on that, and the later is already there.

Most of us would take Box A, but the folks at FB or even Twitter are looking at box X, Y and Z.

Of course once you get mid alphabet the possibility of an empty box is probably pretty slim.

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Twitter was started by an already successful founder (Biz Stone); Facebook was a profitable company that did sell itself (through further investment) to re-position as a world-changing company.

As an entrepreneur you are in the best position to change the world after building a profitable, sustainable business (vs initially aiming to change the world). You can do it over and over with the same venture (like Jobs, Zuck, Wolfram, etc) or you can build, sell and then repeat (Andreeson, Thiel, etc). Either way, changing he world is about iteration, persistence and taking advantage of the world changing opportunity when the time is right. Of course you can get very lucky, but statistically, as an entrepreneur the best way to change the world is to build a profitable company and then repeat.

Not to take anything away from Bill Gates, but he always had a million dollar trust fund to fall back on.

(Source: http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/)

You're entirely correct, but what always amazes me, is the amount of time I spend on MS software, but if you look at the market cap of MS vs Oracle vs Apple, something seems out of whack.

234.89B MSFT 112.40B Oracle 170.08B AAPL

I can kinda see why apple is worth so much, although, of all apple consumers, how many hours a day do they spend on Apple vs how many on MS. And I really don't even see how Oracle is in this same race, but they are.

I suspect that Oracle is responsible for a lot of "invisible" software that runs some really important systems. Apple is big because of their portable consumer electronics as much as because of the Mac, and the typical consumer probably spends more time with their phone or music player than their computer. FWIW, I use Microsoft software maybe once a week at best, and I don't use anything by Apple (unless you count CUPS).

Yeah, Zuckerberg is almost certainly rich, and not just on paper. Also, I know more than a few FB employees who sold their stock through Facebook's stock sale program and are sitting pretty.

Don't forget that Gates started Traf-O-Data before making it big with Microsoft.

I believe Zuck took out $40 millions under the table a few years back.

> This story makes guys like Zuck and Gates seem extraordinary.

What makes Gates extraordinary in this sense? Just because he kept some shares and stayed on, it doesn't mean that the source of his fortune isn't the Microsoft-shares he sold.

IPOing is also selling out, it's just selling out to a lot of people simultaneously.

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