My view, having watched some super wealthy guys up close, is the formula to make a lot of money in one life time is:
(1) Be skillful at whatever you do
+
(2) Take a lot of risk
Keep in mind there is a survivorship bias at work.
So the really rich guys, they usually do have considerable skill and ability. But they also have taken big risk after big risk and it has, more or less, always paid off for them.
It is all they know...the coin flips going their way. So they are some combo of they are pre-wired to take big risks and/or have been conditioned by experience that the risks just always pay off for them.
So they will just keep taking big risks time after time. There is no "take the money off the table".
The question I always have is it more (A) pre-wired or (B) Good luck has conditioned them over and over. Don't know.
As you point out, you see not just SBF doing this, but Zuck and Elon and the list goes on...
You forgot the most successful strategy for making enormous amounts of money in one life: start with enormous amounts of money, and don't be entirely completely idiotically incompetent. Making a billion dollars is a lot easier if you can start with mommy's billion, or even her hundred million.
Everything I have seen shows the strategy is “start with connections”.
The money is less important (multiple bankruptee becomes prez, Gates used IBM connections, Elizabeth Holmes got investors through family connections, yada yada yada).
There are lots of billionaires that started from upper-middle-class wealth. And other examples of children given huge money that blow it all.
Keep in mind there is a survivorship bias at work.
So the really rich guys, they usually do have considerable skill and ability. But they also have taken big risk after big risk and it has, more or less, always paid off for them.
It is all they know...the coin flips going their way. So they are some combo of they are pre-wired to take big risks and/or have been conditioned by experience that the risks just always pay off for them.
So they will just keep taking big risks time after time. There is no "take the money off the table".
The question I always have is it more (A) pre-wired or (B) Good luck has conditioned them over and over. Don't know.
As you point out, you see not just SBF doing this, but Zuck and Elon and the list goes on...