Are there just a lot of really rich people out there? Or am I over-cautious and they're operating without a safety net?
To make things a little more surreal: a few weeks after I turned 30 this past October, Twitter went public, confirming that I never need to work again. (I’m still getting my head around that.)
All I did was work as a developer and live below my means.
Being rich isn't necessary. Living below your means is a great way to build a cushion for emergencies... or for when you burn out and need an extended vacation. The only people who really have an excuse to be unable to do that are people making less than the poverty line. Anything more than that, and you can save.
Of course in this case the author is rich, having been able to cash out his early Twitter stock after their IPO, but being rich isn't the only path.
The problem for most people on this forum is probably not money--it's time. I'm sure many readers here have $6k to spend on a vacation. How many have two full months off work a year, on top of all the other normal days off and sick time? I'd wager only a very, very small minority, especially among those in the US.
Having deadlines and taking flights, being picky about lodging - this is what costs money while traveling.
The Internet also has a lot of 25-year-olds dying of stomach cancer.
The likelihood that an individual person will have that happen is very low, but those 1-in-10,000 events are magnified by reporting bias (in favor of the unusual) when you're on the Internet.
Couple this with the positive reporting bias of social media, and it looks like there are even more very rich people than there are.
However, the answer is that there are still a fair number of rich people out there. Self-made tech rich people are extremely rare-- you're about as likely to win the startup lottery, if you weren't born into VC connections that take you directly to founderdom, as you are to win the lottery-- but there are plenty of people making money the old-fashioned way: inheriting it.
You'll notice that private companies never do that stuff because they suffer if they don't get results.
But another part of it is advocating for the RFP-IT Act, which would make it a lot easier for small businesses to sell to the federal government: http://blog.dobt.co/2014/01/27/Reform-Federal-Procurement-fo...
And another is piloting our software, Screendoor.io, which is based on the project we ran successfully in the White House, RFP-EZ: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/15/rfp-ez-delivers-sa...
Not sure what you mean about fundraising though, as we don't raise money (we have received a grant for our operations from the Knight Foundation, but aren't looking to raise any VC money).
Anyway, really glad to see he's doing so well, especially after reading his blog entry a few months ago about his personal troubles. It's refreshing to see a fellow human being making great use of their time and fortune to the betterment of others. Good luck in the new role, al3x.
You know what's really wacky about government inefficiency?
It's damn near impossible to help, much less fix from the inside.
I've long been convinced that the best/only way to help right along the lines of what these guys are doing - build boxed solutions from the outside.
This is effectively an air-drop of tools which sails in over top of all the petty backbiting, ass covering and general self-serving bullshit that stifles in-house projects.
Not, oddly enough, "Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy" which is the only Wikipedia hit[2].
[1] http://www.dobt.co/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_therapy#History
Easy to use crypto for one.
