>I feel a duty to point out the white washing. Nathan made his money on the basis of patent trolling,
I feel a duty to point out this "black washing". Nathan made the bulk, if not all, of his fortune at Microsoft. They bought his startup in 1986 for 1.5M in stock. He then went to MS and founded MS research, which has turned out a spectacular amount of good CS research under his leadership.
Here's [1] Nathan's worth in 1999, all from MS, at 650M. MS stock went from around 0.10 in 1986 at the purchase to around $40 in 1999, so pretty much all of Nathan's wealth was in MS stock.
Today Nathan is worth around 800M, which, inflation adjusted back to 1999, is 200M less than where he was in 1999. [3]
Also, Intellectual Ventures is not his - he co-founded it, and now owns around 40%. Also the entire income stream of IV is tiny compared to big patent players at big tech firms. They look to have around a few B in assets, after 20 years of existance. IBM does over 1B a year simply in licensing of it's patent portfolio. Some other big tech firms are similar.
So while it's true he founded Intellectual Ventures, it's not at all true that is where he made his money. At best it gives him a place to play with ideas, but a massive money making machine it is not.
Don't cast aspersions without checking your claims.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1011/6409172a.html?sh=6ae...
[2] https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/nathan....
[3] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
I feel a duty to point out this "black washing". Nathan made the bulk, if not all, of his fortune at Microsoft. They bought his startup in 1986 for 1.5M in stock. He then went to MS and founded MS research, which has turned out a spectacular amount of good CS research under his leadership.
Here's [1] Nathan's worth in 1999, all from MS, at 650M. MS stock went from around 0.10 in 1986 at the purchase to around $40 in 1999, so pretty much all of Nathan's wealth was in MS stock.
Today Nathan is worth around 800M, which, inflation adjusted back to 1999, is 200M less than where he was in 1999. [3]
Also, Intellectual Ventures is not his - he co-founded it, and now owns around 40%. Also the entire income stream of IV is tiny compared to big patent players at big tech firms. They look to have around a few B in assets, after 20 years of existance. IBM does over 1B a year simply in licensing of it's patent portfolio. Some other big tech firms are similar.
So while it's true he founded Intellectual Ventures, it's not at all true that is where he made his money. At best it gives him a place to play with ideas, but a massive money making machine it is not.
Don't cast aspersions without checking your claims.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1011/6409172a.html?sh=6ae...
[2] https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/nathan....
[3] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm