I do feel a little bad about this comment--it's probably overly snarky. Maybe he won that 250 grand playing poker from a small nest egg that he earned at a minimum wage job. And he isn't claiming to be sharing the secret of success--he's just sharing his experience, which is valuable regardless of his beginnings.

I don't know. Something about this rubbed me the wrong way, but it probably says something more about me than about him or life in general.

I know someone who did this during college.

I had a friend in college — let's call him Sam — with whom I paired on most CS projects. It was useful to find a partner who was as studious as yourself to avoid having to deal with anyone else's potential BS and end up doing all the work yourself. Sam seemed like a completely normal guy where normal is… we share some of the same interests.

Sam wasn't from money, worked hard on assignments, we shot pool and worked on projects together. I knew Sam was "into" poker but I didn't understand the extent. I was "into" lots of things too.

We're hanging out one day and Sam tells me the "funny story" that happened last week where his parents and girlfriend staged an intervention to demand that he stop playing online poker after he had gone on tilt and lost $200k in a single night.

I about lost my marbles.

He then goes on to explain that while he had agreed to quit playing online poker because he valued his relationships, he was of the opinion that an intervention was a bit much since he was still up over $600k and wasn't on tilt so much as trying out higher stakes tables in an effort to make money more quickly than on the low stakes tables he had already found success grinding.

Same. Especially at poker's hottest peak, I had a number of friends who ended up going really large on online gambling (and they didn't come from money, either- just had built up a bank roll over a few years). After awhile they found themselves experiencing these huge $xx,xxx swings on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. I think they intellectually understood what that meant, but once you got to that level you kind of have to put the idea of it being a lot of money aside to be able to properly gamble it (if there is a "proper" way to gamble it).

Anyway, one friend in particular told me he was making ~$200k a year, when we were around 22. Asked him about taxes and he said he had never paid a dime. So, uh, that could have been his greatest gamble right there.

I started with $100 and built it up, then lost most of it

But also started with a roof over my head, great parents, an internet connection, etc. I would consider myself a trust fund baby in that sense.

See, I knew this was going to happen and then I was going to feel real bad.

One question I do have for you: How did you get Stephen Wolfram, Seth Godin, etc. to come on your early pods?

Emails!

if you're 19 and you have 250 grand you are maybe not super rich but pretty rich at that point.

frankly, cutting with ockam's razor leads me to conclude that super rich is a more likely explanation than playing poker from a small nest egg and then going and losing it all.

Can you quantify in terms of percentage how you define super rich vs rich?

In my mind, rich is top 20% (income of $134k or more) of society and super rich is top 5% (income of $214k or more). I'm wondering if that correlates to your thoughts.

In my mind there a big difference between being “rich” and being a “high income earner” (HIE).

Someone who is a HIE may have a better chance of becoming rich if they invest and are good at money management. On the other hand they may be very bad with money and living paycheck to paycheck despite this.

Someone who is rich has freedom. They have enough money in investments to live off of the returns indefinitely.

Your “rich” is just upper class, and your “super rich” is mostly just well off.

Anyone in the 500k to 1000k range are the almost rich. These are the people who will feel “tax hikes on the wealthy” the most. On paper their income is great but then taxes bump them down a social class.

When you clear the 1000k range and are well on your way to 2000k, after taxes you’re still making a million or so a year depending where you live, so still safely a millionaire and thus rich (two commas club).

However, it’s worth noting there are more and more millionaires these days. These are “inflation” millionaires. A true “millionaire” in the spirit of what the word meant in the time it was first coined (early 1900s) would be someone who has a net worth of around 25 million USD today.

Someday merely being a millionaire won’t be rich or impressive at all.

>>after taxes you’re still making a million or so a year depending where you live, so still safely a millionaire and thus rich (two commas club).

A millionaire just has a net worth greater than or equal to a million dollars. They don't need to have an after-tax income greater than or equal to a million dollars.

There’s different kinds of millionaires. I guess I was referring to a cash flow millionaire.

I guess I rely on Chris Rock's difference between rich and wealthy; so super rich has to be just before you're wealthy.

I remember reading somewhere else that rich also required a million in assets, not just a high income like 250 grand, but I figure in the context of a 19 year old they don't need assets at that point to still be rich if they have a high enough income for the year.

Maybe a one time 250 grand earner from a poor background can be a temporarily advantaged poor person.

Super rich means you can afford your own Learjet and a pilot to fly you around like other people have a car.

I made nearly 100k flipping domain names when I was 19. My seed capital was my college tuition money for a semester (I delayed paying the fees and bought a domain name instead). So it's entirely possible

Hey just want to note that although that sentence makes him look like just some rich kid with infinite resources, I went to college with Jeff and I actually have personally talked to him when he was starting this project. Regardless of what affluence he had in the past/present, he started this idea from near-zero -- the site looked like shit, he worked on it slowly, and from reading the article it looks like he got the right people on his ship at the right time, and kept doing what he was good at.

Also, he's not tone-deaf -- I'm sure it took some consideration to let that sentence fly (I'd be very surprised if he didn't wonder something along the lines of "are people going to think I'm just some rich kid"), I like to think he leaned to the side of honesty.

I can say at least personally that he did NOT have the silver spoon rich kid vibe. Not at all, he was lost just like the rest of us sometimes are, I'm super jealous and happy for him :)

It's disingenuous to say, "…regardless of what affluence he had." The thing about being wealthy isn't that you don't have to work as hard to succeed at something (well, sometimes it is). The thing about being wealthy is that you don't have to do anything, so you have all this time to focus on what you want to do—and you can fail while doing it without any major consequences. Most people can't do that. Hell, half of the people in the US are scared to take a day off of work for fear of getting fired.

Yes. If you are wealthy (i.e. don’t depend on income) you can take big risks. 99% of the US couldn’t afford to spend $250k for a learning experience and a cute blog post.

To me that's almost the exact definition of wealth: not the amount of money that you have, but the fact that you have the freedom to do whatever you want to do - and fail hard at it - with no (or little) negative consequence. When people talk about "living the dream", that's what it means to me: not the life of the idle rich, but the freedom to try and fail - and hopefully succeed eventually - without ending up destitute or dependent on a salary to live (as most of us are).

99% of the world couldn’t afford to spend $25k

I don't think it's disingenous, becasue there are lots of different kinds of wealthy people. At the least, I meant to distinguish him from silver spoon types that simply purchase viewers/apps/influence and ride it out, or those that just fail and fail and fail in incredibly stupid ways, learn little and fall back on parents' money all the time. As far as I know, he is not that person.

In my mind what he's accomplished is doable by just living at your parents house (yes, that's also a bit of a luxury that others may not have), which is why I don't consider this to be simply a byproduct of wealth. With a bunch of drive and sheer will it could be done in nights and weekends. Is he entrepreneur of the year? maybe not, but he's certainly not richie rich who bought his way to the table -- while I have no idea what his resources are or what his interactions with whatever wealth source allowed him 250K @ 19, what he's done is not out of the realm of most office workers, especially in tech.

[EDIT]: He actually responded with how he got his start: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16573002

Exactly, and this is a thing which would merit some work and attention from SV aspirational rich-sters. The damage done from scarcity is very real, and it's a profound handicap: it's not that effective to go temporarily insane and take on lots of risk without thinking of the consequences. You can't really artifically create the mental state of 'there aren't really consequences so I can focus my attention fully on this work without fear of disaster'.

So, logically, in order to maximize productivity output of entrepreneurs and new-thing-tryers, you must truly remove the consequences, perhaps with something like a universal basic income. Only then do you get to experience innovation as applied to an entire population, and only that will produce a broad enough population of experiments that you'll get a synergism and the invention of really new industries and scenarios.

Not rocket science, but maybe it'd lead to better rocket science :)

Step 1. Be super rich Step 2. Still be likable

:)

After a bit of digging, I think his story is plausible. He got into the game in 2004; At that time, it was very much possible for a smart, determined teenager to grind a hundred bucks into a quarter mil. Before Black Friday[1] chased all the soft money out of the game, pretty much anyone with an ounce of sense could play profitable poker and some people made a lot of money very quickly. He claims to have blown most of his winnings in that one-month losing streak, which is very much a thing that cocky 18-year-old poker players do.

I think it's fairly clear that Meyerson came from a relatively privileged background and had a lot of advantages - he attended one of the best high schools in the US - but I don't think it's necessarily fair to dismiss him as a trust fund kid who lucked his way through life.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg

Sorry but you have to get lucky, too. No way you can turn 100 into 250k no way no how unless you are coming out on the good side of the luck factor.

It's nice, and I'm sure you're a good player, but you definitely got lucky.

" Before Black Friday[1] chased all the soft money out of the game, pretty much anyone with an ounce of sense could play profitable poker and some people made a lot of money very quickly. "

You're best edge in the softest game of all time is not as big as you think it is.

Accurate

Are you really surprised that starting a business requires upfront capital and an environment where financial risk can be absorbed?

Does this sentiment have to be echoed every time someone who comes from money talks about their business. There is a class system in the US, you're only wasting your breath trying to be snarky about it. Business is a mix of talent and chance and people with money can buy more chances where others might not even get one. It doesn't diminish this person's accomplishment.

It is mentioned because it is important to remember. Those successful privileged tend to think it was all their own mental acumen and hard work, so everyone could have done it.

In the past we would poke holes in the start-up idea or the weekend hacking project, but in good fun and there would be solid feedback generally. Having someone execute their idea, and then go out of their way to explain the process to the rest of us should be a source of encouragement. It makes me sad just how personal the dismissiveness on HN has become.

I don’t see how it’s dismissive. It’s concise.

Here let me waste my time telling you how I hacked advertising to make xyz product with a gazillion users OR I can just tell you I started out with many hundreds of thousands of dollars and just spent way into success.

Would’ve saved me some time idk

Money can influence but won't guarantee success. They still need to execute on something. And surely at some point in describing process for us, there could be is a nugget of knowledge that triggers some insight in someone else.

That's only accurate if the person in question did, indeed, spend their way into success.

It sounds like that was a bankroll he built up through play, not his initial stake.

It's quite common for people to start with just $1k and do well and get to that kind of money. I'd recommend doing some research before just jumping to conclusions:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-meyerson-05275716/ - "Parlayed a single small investment into a large bankroll." under Online Poker Player

$250k isn't a huge amount of money for a professional poker player. I few successful and/or lucky years and you can build up quite an operating fund.

As a 19 year old, at least in the US, he'd have had less than two years to win a quarter million dollars. I doubt that happened.

During the online poker boom there were many such stories. The amount of money moving around online poker in 2005-2009 was just insane.

Lots and lots of people went from 1k or less invested to moderately wealthy. I knew multiple people personally in college then who went from ~0 to > 100k.

It happened to me and many people in my poker circle. If you played well, had good bankroll management, game selected and studied hard it wasn't nearly as hard as you think.

Absolutely could have happened even if he played the lowest variance games available with good bankroll management.

All it would take is good streak (maybe luckbox some SnGs), move up the stakes, and have a good run in something like PLO to do the same in-a-day.

I played extensively and still have friends that play professionally, this type of story is not uncommon at all.

If the timeframe was right, around the middle to the end of the last decade, it was reasonably possible. I was the kinda guy handing them the money :-(

Not super rich. Just rich enough not to need a job for a while. Which if you don't have kids, means save $5k and live on a mate's sofa or something similar.

Yeah, because only "super rich" people start successful podcasts, blogs, etc.

Like that Neistat guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Y-ahQFQDA

Exception to the rule and dismissal of the enormous advantage money gives.

I haven't found any "enormous advantage money gives" when it comes to podcasts, and other such works.

Starting some regular business, yes, but writers, podcasters, and artists in general, have always come from all kinds of backgrounds, especially troubles ones.

The advantage is simply being in a place where you can focus on creating something like a podcast that will not make you (actually will cost you) money for a good long while.

Most people without money or support don't have the time and resources to devote to creating something like that.

Are we talking the homeless or third world poor here?

Because the average american squanders 2-3 hours on tv and social media every day -- more than enough to start a podcast, even if they also work.

Human beings need a little bit of downtime for general decompression and whatnot in my experience (unless you want to go for that coveted 35yo burnout status). I'm not saying that that 2-3 hours of tv/social media can't be more efficiently spent on a different form of relaxation plus some kind of after-work job/hobby, but I do think it's oversimplifying a bit to say that leisure activities = waste.

Or more specifically, be born by rich parents.