Graham Contra AOC

I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible. -- Paul Graham on earning a billion dollars

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In the wake of the latest populist drivel against "billionaires" by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, venture capitalist Paul Graham decimates her assertion, notably its smuggled-in premise that one must necessarily cheat others on the way to amassing a net worth of billion dollars.

The crux of Graham's argument is that startup founders like the ones he coaches and invests in do such a good job helping their customers that word-of-mouth helps their businesses grow exponentially:

A couple days later I was talking to the founder of a startup I'd funded. I began by asking, as I usually do when I meet a founder, what her growth rate was. 93% last month, she said. I pointed out that this meant her net worth was also growing at 93% a month. She was getting richer at a stupendously rapid rate. And yet she hadn't been doing anything bad. The reason her startup was growing so fast was simply that users loved what she'd built. So she could feel from her own experience how wrong that politician was. She wasn't exploiting anyone. Exactly the opposite in fact. The reason her startup was growing so fast was that she and her cofounder had been working their asses off to make their users happy, and as a result the users had been telling their friends. And that gets you exponential growth.

Graham notes further that "A couple million and 93% growth are not, in fact, radically different from a billion. They're nine and a half months apart."

Graham, of course, acknowledges that 93% growth is unusual, but after using the example and helping his readers understand the calculations, he shows that more typical growth rates can see someone who has a good idea and works hard become a billionaire in a decade -- as 30 of the people Graham has trained have done.

The essay notably goes beyond the demolition job by offering broad general advice on how to turn this trick yourself.

My only complaint is that, like most influential people, Paul Graham apparently does not see wealth creation as morally good. The idea that possessing wealth is evil is a moral idea with a stranglehold on our culture and it is that idea -- which Ayn Rand fought with her superior alternative of an egoistic morality -- that must ultimately lose its influence in our culture.

Graham's piece remains well worth the read, for it is a powerful antidote to the base ignorance that altruism excuses and encourages in our culture, such as about how it's possible for an honest person to become wealthy.

-- CAV