I'm a big fan or your style and work, Andrew, and I like the attention-grabbing titles you choose, but this one is a bit over the top. Should really be "How a 26-Year-Old Built a $100 Million Net Worth In Under 10 Years". The current version reads too much like it's a 16-year-old who's worth $100 million (a bit bait-ish). It's like if you write an article about Bill Gates titled "How a 16-Year-Old Became a Billionaire in 15 Years" ;-)
Love the site and love what you're trying to do with your business model (whether it works or not). Keep the interviews coming.
I don't see the headline as misleading, but maybe I'm too close to it right now.
I changed it on my site.
I left the reference to him being 16 because that's when he got into the ad business. But I said he was 25 when his net worth hit $100 mil.
By the way, including dollar signs in so many of my headlines feels out of touch with my mission. I wish I knew a better way to communicate the size and importance of my guests' achievements in 10 words or less.
Well, if you make 20 mil when you are 20 you are rather likely to become a narcissistic a-hole. And then fill the Internet with shirtless pictures of yourself. But we should give this guy some time, he is still young and has a lot to learn.
Exactly. I hear a lot of hate from uni friends about alums in 20s who have hit it big and now do what most people with money in their 20s would do. A lot of these people have to seriously repress their social life in their teens and college years until they hit it big and can go back to make up for it. It's quite understandable IMO.
Once you've made FU money, you earn karma to drown yourself in some stupidity. Perfectly fine for me! I am sure he has moments where he looks in the mirror and laughs at himself and the shit he's doing. That in itself can be fun and fulfilling.
Why would it? He doesn't seem to have a very great command of language but he's got all that money so whatever.
Lot's of people made a lot of money with the internet boom, pg and Mark Cuban among them. However, they are still people that did not enter the 'you cannot comment on me unless your wealth is greater than or equal to mine' club.
Honest question - why should we expect there be a correlation between "command of language" and entrepreneurial success? Also, curious as to why we should think someone only deserves to have money only if they had good command over language.
Hmmm, interesting questions. I don't think I implied people only deserve money if they have a good command of language. I think I made that comment more to point to how his lack of education was apparent from his manner of speech.
I would expect a good correlation between charisma and entrepreneurial success, of which being well-spoken can be a large component. People here often look to succeed by use of technical acumen, which is another trait that can serve you well, but don't overlook having someone around that is able to connect with people on a more basic level.
"I think I made that comment more to point to how his lack of education was apparent from his manner of speech."
That's an interesting observation. I actually watched the video again to try to pick out the parts which could cause you to think so. But, nothing seemed to stand out. His manner of speaking was not distinguished in a sense, but at the same time, it seemed more like means to an end, and wasn't something that caused me to think any less of him.
I bring up this issue because I feel I am not "well-spoken" and am trying to see how I can address this deficiency.
I'd have to review to go in more depth but those things are a little jarring to me. If you'd like to work on improving how you sound I'd recommend reading (a lot but preferable some stuff that has general interest, not necessarily fiction) and practice in a relaxed atmosphere. In college there was brewery tour nearby. That was the perfect place to have a dozen different conversations without anyone being wasted enough to remove any lucidity from the participants.
Because unless you're equally successful "this guy was a tool" comes across as poorly concealed envy. If you're going to trash someone who's way more successful than you are, use specifics and acknowledge his positive characteristics as well.
Not everyone defines success in terms of dollars. Many people make less money than they could because they're unwilling to comprise their morals or do things they feel take advantage of other people. There are plenty of rich douchebags, and you don't need money to point out that they're douchebags.
Obviously I have no data other than anecdotal evidence to support this claim, however, I would conjecture that the personality traits that lend themselves to acquiring wealth quickly at a young age, may also engender development of bullish personal decorum.
So do we all need to include our net worth on our profile page now?
Frankly, I'd prefer if our comments stood on their own merits (or lack thereof), but perhaps you've hit upon the next social media craze. Instead of simply using karma scores, we could multiply one's karma by the amount of currency tracked in their covestor account.
Do you think that when you attack someone that has been less fortunate than you that you don't have to use specifics or identify positive characteristics?
i'm surprised by the level of hate exhibited in these comments...sure the guy has lots of pics with no shirt & maybe he comes across as narcissistic & arrogant, but he's also a high school drop-out & the son of poor immigrants who ended up coming to our country and creating an immense amount of wealth for himself plus jobs for others...
how many of us can say we've done even 10% of that? i know i can't (at least not yet)
Success is demanding. Extreme success is extremely demanding. I don't think any of us truly know how we deal with success until we experience it. I'm not defending Chahal's arrogance, but neither can I claim to understand his perspective.
I echo your thoughts. I thought YC new was a place where we appreciated the entrepreneurial spirit of creating something out of nothing. It was my sense that overcoming the odds was held in esteem. This guy surely seems to have done that. So, why call him a "tool" and downplay his achievements because he decided to put pictures of himself without a shirt on the net, or because he flaunts his wealth?
I don't know how much hate has been conveyed in here, but you are telling this in a weird way. He dropped out of high school because he was already making a lot of cash.
I personally have qualms about the guys ethics. He got his start by lying about his capabilities, which isn't the worst thing I ever heard but he got lucky on not getting caught. Then, he hired someone with money that he didn't have. I'm sure many people would be irate about this no matter the outcome in the end.
I think many people would be doing much better if they had 10% of the luck this guy had.
Oprah showed how dramatic his transformation for internet entrepreneur, Gurbaksh Chahal
As nobody has yet commented on this, I have started doubting my command of the English language, but here goes: it's hard to take a site seriously when it botches the first sentence of an article like this. No care for the language == no care for the facts.
How many different variations of headlines do you think exist? You think that it's possible to just come up with new and exciting headlines all the time?
This headline is descriptive and it works. Just because you've seen other headlines like that does not mean that new people discovering the site have.
I don't think it's that hard to come up with a different headline for each interview. That said, the headlines don't take anything away from the interviews.
I guess the "How a --- made a $1 billion by ----" headlines are part of Mixergy's brand.
Short of a weird issue with is first company. Check this out:
>And ValueClick in Westlake Village, Calif., which offers performance-based online advertising services, acquired Click Agents.com in Fremont, Calif., which offers those same services. As part of the deal, Click Agents shareholders will receive 5.3 million shares of ValueClick stock, valued at an estimated $20 million to $24 million.
>Click Agents, which has 31 employees and revenue estimated at $14 million, will initially operate as an autonomous unit of ValueClick. Gurbaksh Chahal, 26, chairman, chief executive and president at Click Agents, continues as president.
(Source: search nytimes for ClickAgents its November 8, 2000 (the url is obnoxious)).
(26 in 2000? Weird)
He likes to say $40 million since that was the value of the shares when the deal was announced. Sort of silly but that is true. However he asserts that he got some amount in between. He could of but not if he didn't own all of the shares (he could of but that would be weird since he was talking about sweat equity) or if he sold between 2001 and early 2003.
Interestingly, if he had just held those shares until May 25, 2007 he (or the shareholders collectively) would have had $173.2 million.
This didn't come up in the interview but this comes out about BlueLithium on nytimes:
>It is backed by venture capital firms including WaldenVC and 3i.
Given that the VCs had a portion of this venture as well as the people from Belarus that got $15 million its seems likely that G could have gotten more money by selling ValueClick's stock after holding it then doing any work in that period of time.
Love the site and love what you're trying to do with your business model (whether it works or not). Keep the interviews coming.