A successful business however removes the set salary for a set job restriction and opens up more possibilities if you are willing to take the gamble. The jury is out currently on whether the gamble was worth it.
Thanks for the information, Petey. I'm not part of that jury. Have you read
The Millionaire Next Door? As I recall, far more of the millionaires made it your way -- as independent business men -- than my way, as a <strike>poor salaried slob.</strike> dedicated professional employee. :DI have read some accounts of people who made it big with one business of their own who sold that business and went for a second fortune in another new business, but didn't make it. We can speculate whether this is because they were no longer young, hungry, or vigorous enough to put in enough effort the second time, or whether the first success had a largely fortuitous component, i.e., they got lucky. Certainly Bill Gates was enormously lucky that IBM did not see the potential in DOS and let him keep the rights to it.
Of course, I wish you success.
PS:
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS for $50,000, keeping the IBM deal a secret from Seattle Computer Products.
Gates then talked IBM into letting Microsoft retain the rights, to market MS DOS separate from the IBM PC project, Gates proceeded to make a fortune from the licensing of MS-DOS.
Here is another story for your consideration:
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/prin ... 61,00.html All geeks know the story on how the first graphical user interface (GUI) was delivered to the masses. (If you don't know the story, shame on you, and read on.) The legendary tale goes something like this. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which was developing the GUI. Jobs saw PARC's work interface and used it to develop the Macintosh operating system, the first ever OS for the masses based on a GUI. The rest is history.
This version of the story does not emphasize the fact that the Xerox management, being devoted to the copier business, did not see the value of the intellectual property that PARC had developed and simply gave it Steve Jobs, who did see that value. Some brave and insightful employee of PARC refused to give Jobs the initial briefing until she was given a direct (written?) order from her uncomprehending bosses.
In thirty years of corporate employment, I saw my bosses make many mistakes based on their underestimating the significance of computer power, but none of their mistakes are even remotely as significant as these errors of IBM and Xerox. To extend the story, consider this irony:
http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm The story describes how, in 1956, after some years of struggling, Dessauer was able to build the prototype of the 914 plain paper copier. Lacking the money to take the copier to market to build factories and so forth, he decided to take it just down the road to IBM. He told IBM, "Take this, build factories, go out and sell it. I just want a small royalty." And IBM did what all companies do when they can't make up their minds: They went out and hired some consultants.
After an exhaustive study that took 18 months, the consultants came back with a very thick report which conclusively proved that there was no market for a plain paper copier. They had two chief reasons and a host of minor ones. Number one: there wasn't enough copy volume. That was a big problem. The other was that the xerography process cost more than ten-times as much per copy as the AB Dick mimeograph process, which was the technology they compared it against. The consultants figured no one would spend ten times as much to copy anything. So based on their report, IBM turned down the copier offer, and that was several hundreds of billions of dollars ago.
That is, Xerox got its start in life because IBM management did not appreciate the potential of a new technology and, even with that history, Xerox gave away the technology that Jobs exploited.
I trust you are amused. :lol:
He who has lived obscurely and quietly has lived well. [Latin: Bene qui latuit, bene vixit.]
Chips