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# Will a Billion-Dollar Idea Get You Rich?

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/H5ac7wYU.m3u8" -->
## Video: Will a Billion-Dollar Idea Get You Rich?

[Watch (HLS stream): Will a Billion-Dollar Idea Get You Rich?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/H5ac7wYU.m3u8) (1:12)

![Will a Billion-Dollar Idea Get You Rich?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/H5ac7wYU/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2015-09-16. Author and economist Sam Wilkin says no._


---

Jul 27, 2023 6:49 PM UTC

---

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[Dollar General Offers $9.7 Billion For Family Dollar To Counter Rival](/video/I1zV4aXv/)

### Dollar General Offers $9.7 Billion For Family Dollar To Counter Rival

---


## Transcript

[ MUSIC ] Let's say I have a million dollar or billion dollar idea. Is that is enough to get rich to have this great idea? Or is there more to the formula than that? No, that's not enough. A let me give you one example. Bill Gates. Now Bill Gates is the world's richest man. A fortune of $ 80 billion. You know if you had that kind of money, all your problems would be solved. Right? [ LAUGH ] But because he's so rich, people often resort to try to explain it. They sort of think he's kind of superhuman No, but you don't need to resort to miracles to explain Bill Gates. Wealth it all comes down to economics.

And basically what he did is that in the 1970s, when he gets started, there are no protections for software, there are no property rights protections for software. Bill Gates is able to change this and the advantage that he had Has in the technology sector, and that no other technology CEO has is that his father is a lawyer so he's able to develop these legal contracts that protect his property rights, and they prevent anyone from copying his software, and that insulates him from competition. So that's how he gets on the road to making these, all these [ UNKNOWN ]. [ MUSIC ]

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