1. Founded a tech startup at the age of 30 and has taken the startup to series C in the bay area with $500M valuation (entrepreneur success but not so crazy yet, might fail and no wealth will be realized) 2. Graduated from MIT/Stanford with phds and went on to academia to publish a phenomenal paper about AI that the industry references at the age of 36 (academic success) 3. Worked at Google out of college and went all the way up from L3 to L9 in just 12 years. On the path to SVP by age 40 (corporate success) 4. Created a social media app (simple taking pictures and sharing) at age 25 and has gone viral among teens. Not crazy popular but teens have heard of the app (success without background) 5. A YouTuber with 1 million subscribers and has 1-2M views on average on every video (influential success)
Once you have achieved any one of those categories, you wouldn’t give a crap about prestige
Not true. Even among prestige, there are different tiers. Only common fools like us think once we get some prestige, all’s good. Humans are greedy sir
What’s most prestigious depends on the eye of the beholder. Person 1 has the highest wealth, 2 achieved the most academically elite, 3 has the fastest career trajectory with the beaten path, and 4/5 will be most selected by GenZ who aren’t the most academically/professionally inclined. On Blind, signaling with money or career trajectory wins. But give me 1 all day.
Number 1 still has no wealth. Startup goes bust, leave him with a couple millions at best
It’s illiquid, but he can exit if he chooses to. His equity stake is 30% of $500M. Even at half the valuation if sold, that’s $75M for him pre-tax. And there are personal-finance vehicles to access money from illiquid equity, like a PAL. If you’re not familiar, look into pledged accounts. It’s how the rich get richer.
1. If you can do that, you can leverage that success to get you to 3, maybe not at google but a hotter younger company. $500m at series C is crazy (other than 2022/2021) and would make them on paper far richer than every person on here. They can also cash out secondaries too
With the amount of money you make as 1, you wouldn’t even want to do 3. You’d be a partner at a VC, invest in real estate, and maybe start your next thing if you even care to have another regular job again in your life.
Most likely exit is an acquisition so it’s likely you’d be forced to do 3 for 4 years while you rest and vest haha But yeah 100% don’t think hyper ambitious founder people would do well at google
5 is the most prestigious. You’ll get the most 🐱
Body count over 10 is prestigious
TIL I’m a worthy of prestige on blind. Thank you for this honor
Bro def 1 or 4. Startup and YouTube is tough. Building your brand / content is also so much more rewarding and respected than working as an ant in the alphabet colony
Only #2 has a chance of being remembered a hundred years from now. So #2.
A single phenomenal paper at 36 doesn't exactly scream academic success
depends on what "phenomenal" means. there are definitely academics who have made the history books off of the glory from a single revolutionary / seminal / field-defining paper
General prestige for someone not too familiar with all this? Definitely Google.
The goal is to see what people value the most when various aspects of success are presented