Why it is harder to get from rag to riches these days

[neddy]

Remember those grandfather stories about how they built their corporate empire from nothing.

Now that all these businesses are established, it is harder to achieve this.

Mind you, you can still get rich if your business is headhunted by a bigger fish, but what is next?


So, you think you have a lot of choices, think again.

 

[laksaboy]

Wait... Pringles is under P&G?!

 

[neddy]

Pringles is sold to Kellogg Company in 2012.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/consumer-brands-owned-ten-companies-graphic_n_1458812.html

 

[GOD IS MY DOG]

simple..................the cost of starting business skyrocketed too high and too fast...............

say you are working and saving up for a business.............the cost of living is rising too fast and at the same time the cost of starting a business rising faster too...............especially if you're talking about those brick and mortar kind of business..........

and also too many people already doing same kind of business so difficult for you to increase market share..........

 

[Leongsam]

It a lot easier nowadays. People can go from zero to billionaire in as little as 5 years. In the old days it took a couple of decades or more.

 

[GOD IS MY DOG]

It a lot easier nowadays. People can go from zero to billionaire in as little as 5 years. In the old days it took a couple of decades or more.

internet lah...........even then only happen in USA and a few other countries...........

 

[neddy]

It a lot easier nowadays. People can go from zero to billionaire in as little as 5 years. In the old days it took a couple of decades or more.

Disruptive innovation is the norm. It hurts existing players. The economic pie is not expanding. Unlike the past where innovation enlarge the economic pie.

Eg Recording companies, DVD rentals are hard hit, full service airlines.

 

[Leongsam]

internet lah...........even then only happen in USA and a few other countries...........

Just because the internet is the driving force behind the creation of wealth in the last 10 years does not make the achievements of those who succeeded any less worthy.

In fact, the internet has been a great leveler as anyone who can afford a cheap computer can create code. In the brick and mortar world, you'll need a loan from a bank at the very minimum.

The internet has created wealth in many countries including China, Japan, Israel, Germany, New Zealand, Denmark and many more. Success is not confined to the US.

 

[kohpc]

This is the age where ' Instant ' is the culture everyone wants to get rich very quickly and are susceptible to investment and other scams. If you have no conscience and a good ability to cheat then becoming rich in no time is easy as pie, especially when the internet can help your schemes to reach more people more easily and quickly.

 

[laksaboy]

No matter how rich you become through your own brilliance, you are still no match for old money and the inheritance of several bloodlines.

 

[Leongsam]

This is the age where ' Instant ' is the culture everyone wants to get rich very quickly and are susceptible to investment and other scams. If you have no conscience and a good ability to cheat then becoming rich in no time is easy as pie, especially when the internet can help your schemes to reach more people more easily and quickly.

Scams on the internet aren't sustainable. Internet billionaires have made their money because there was a huge demand for their creations... eg skype, whatsapp, snapseed, snapchat, adwords, hotmail and thousands of others.

The internet is the closest one can get to being a totally free market. No trade barriers, no government control, no landlords, no red tape, no entry barriers. It boils down to creativity, hard work and timing.

 

[Leongsam]

No matter how rich you become through your own brilliance, you are still no match for old money and the inheritance of several bloodlines.

Old money can be squandered just like new money.

 

[kohpc]

Scams on the internet aren't sustainable. Internet billionaires have made their money because there was a huge demand for their creations... eg skype, whatsapp, snapseed, snapchat, adwords, hotmail and thousands of others.

The internet is the closest one can get to being a totally free market. No trade barriers, no government control, no landlords, no red tape, no entry barriers. It boils down to creativity, hard work and timing.

These scammers I was mentioning use the internet as a tool to get rich but they dont really rely 100% on it. Some of these guys can talk a bird off a tree right into their hands.
As long as there is greed and people who want to get rich fast and without effort, these scammers will thrive internet or not.

 

[Leongsam]

These scammers I was mentioning use the internet as a tool to get rich but they dont really rely 100% on it. Some of these guys can talk a bird off a tree right into their hands.
As long as there is greed and people who want to get rich fast and without effort, these scammers will thrive internet or not.

There are scammers in the real world too. They're hardly confined to the internet.

 

[JossSticksCandleWax]

It is much easier to go from rags to riches. The TOTO prize money nowadays is much bigger than 10 years ago.

 

[Leongsam]

It is much easier to go from rags to riches. The TOTO prize money nowadays is much bigger than 10 years ago.

TOTO prize money isn't riches. It's pocket money.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

Remember those grandfather stories about how they built their corporate empire from nothing.

Now that all these businesses are established, it is harder to achieve this.

Mind you, you can still get rich if your business is headhunted by a bigger fish, but what is next?

So, you think you have a lot of choices, think again.

Don't restrict yourself to the old ways of building corporate giants. The new way is to build global platform companies that can market in many countries without the need for massive overheads and which rely on the internet. Read Andy Kessler's books. He has a latest article on the WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303914304579193991643871688

The internet has made the world a much smaller place. Use it wisely.

 

[nutbush]

hi, thicky, can paste the article, i can't seem to access without subscription, many thks!

Don't restrict yourself to the old ways of building corporate giants. The new way is to build global platform companies that can market in many countries without the need for massive overheads and which rely on the internet. Read Andy Kessler's books. He has a latest article on the WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303914304579193991643871688

The internet has made the world a much smaller place. Use it wisely.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

By ANDY KESSLER


Updated Nov. 15, 2013 6:57 p.m. ET
<article id="articleBody" class="module articleBody" itemprop="articleBody" style="margin: 0.8em 0.6em 1.6em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; position: relative; clear: left;">When President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act in April 2012, he hailed it as "exactly the kind of bipartisan action we should be taking in Washington to help our economy." Well, maybe.
Some JOBS Act provisions kicked in right away. "Emerging growth companies"—those with under $1 billion in revenues—are exempt from many reporting provisions of Sarbannes-Oxley. And so Twitter, TWTR +2.22% for example, only had to show two years of audited results (instead of three) in its IPO filing. And private companies can now have 2,000 investors, up from 500, before they have to file annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Less information is never better.
The SEC, however, waited almost a year and a half to implement a general solicitation rule allowing companies as well as private equity and hedge funds to advertise to a mass audience during their fundraising—though individual investors still need to be accredited, meaning $1 million or more in net worth or $200,000 in individual income. Of course, no self-respecting hedge fund or private-equity firm will advertise, for the same reason law firms Skadden Arps or Wachtell Lipton don't damage their brand running TV ads like personal injury lawyers Schlock and Skeeve.
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In October, the SEC finally put out a "crowdfunding" rule that allows anyone to "angel" invest in startups. Sort of. There are annual caps of 5% for those making under $100,000 a year and 10% for those non-accredited making over $100,000. This is government paternalism trying to limit your downside. Yet there already are investing platforms like RockThePost and AngelList that hopefully weed out most fraud. In any event, government should not be telling people how to, or if they can, invest.
But just because you can invest doesn't mean you should. The crowdfunding rule is now out for public comment. Here's mine: Once you're allowed to invest in private startups, my advice is: don't. Success is much harder than you might think.
First off, the field is crowded. Lots of incubators like Y Combinator (550 investments since 2005) and 500 Startups (600 since 2010 and raising a fund to do 200 a year) have funded startups doing just about everything. Critics call this "spray and pray." Over the years, I've given talks for groups of angels, in Silicon Valley, Boston and New York City. These events are usually fun cocktail parties, lots of former CEOs and captains of industry just dying to drop 50 grand into the next big thing. But at the end of the day, they are really just paying up for future cocktail party conversation: "I'm funding Clean Green, an app that delivers car washers to your driveway. I'm investing in SpeedMetal, a cloud-based service to interpret heavy-metal lyrics."
And returns are rare. The old rule of thumb for venture capitalists is that out of 10 investments, one will be a home run, a few will show some returns, and the rest will fail, return a goose egg, or my favorite saying, end up as a smoking hole in the ground. In reality, venture capitalists turn down 99% of the entrepreneurs who lob in ideas let alone those lucky enough to get a meeting, and these are the professionals. A recent study by Cowboy Ventures looked at the estimated 60,000 consumer and enterprise software startups funded over the last 10 years and found just 39—a measly .07%—valued at over $1 billion. Many like Snapchat and Pinterest are still private.
Whenever I'm pitched a private investment (I usually get out of meetings by claiming I have the flu) they all sound great. Up and to the right. Grand slams. Then I go back to my office and pull out a thick manila folder I keep in my desk. It's filled with certificates. The investments that work and go public require you to send in the certificates in exchange for tradable shares in your account. The ones that are left are dead companies, or walking dead. Optical switches, podcasts, grid optimization, bendable solar cells, silicon factories, I've got them all. Holes in the ground.
Everyone should have the right to make great investments and profit, or lose. Sure, investing in some world-changing app is probably better than investing in your brother-in-law's pizza joint. But not by much, and you won't get a free calzone. Maybe it's the next Twitter . . . but more likely, it's just a dusty certificate. Best to wait until most other angels have given up.
Mr. Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager, is the author most recently of "Eat People" (Portfolio, 2011).
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[Thick Face Black Heart]

Learn from the master himself - http://www.andykessler.com/

Andy Kessler was there in the dot com boom (bubble) of the '90s and has a wealth of experience from that era. Was one of those who rode the market up and avoided the crash.