Comment by interstice

I've seen people I work with become rich, and what I noticed about some of them is that they don't care about being 'nice', they are happy to treat everyone like they owe them something. Being nasty in business works, better and for far longer than it should. I always felt that if I was to succeed or fail, It will be on my own terms and my own thoughts about how to operate ethically, so I became my own boss. 15 years or so later I'm not rich by SV standards, but I did manage to buy a house as a 35yo millenial near the peak of the market off the back of doing what I thought was right. And I'm proud of that. I don't know if I'd call myself smart, but I would suggest that intelligent people are aware of what being ruthless in the pursuit of money will do to those around them, and many will choose not to abuse their intelligence knowing that it would hurt others. Or at least I'd like to think so.