Re:Spent – Poverty Simulator (2011)
by logicallee on Tuesday October 23, 2018 @12:40PM
(#18284956)
Off-topic, but there's a meme on HN that startup equity should be considered "a lottery ticket" (as though you couldn't actively make it into a winner.) As a cute exercise (not too serious) based on your comment, I divided California's $23.8 billion in startup investment in 2017[1] by its population in 2017[2], which is 39.54 million, and got... $601.
(Of course the entities buying these tickets are not necessarily "Californians", just thought this was an interesting take on "per-Capita" investment in a different sort of lottery ticket. It is also funding amounts, rather than opportunity costs people "invest" in these companies by working for reduced or no salary in exchanged for equity - which is the "cost" of the lottery ticket people usually talk about on HN. I just found the resulting number in this exercise really interesting and thought I'd share.)
(Of course the entities buying these tickets are not necessarily "Californians", just thought this was an interesting take on "per-Capita" investment in a different sort of lottery ticket. It is also funding amounts, rather than opportunity costs people "invest" in these companies by working for reduced or no salary in exchanged for equity - which is the "cost" of the lottery ticket people usually talk about on HN. I just found the resulting number in this exercise really interesting and thought I'd share.)
[1] https://tech.co/10-best-states-startup-funding-ranked-2017-0...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=california+population+2017&o...