Roy Raymond (1947 – 1993)

I must admit, I have only recently heard of this Roy Raymond dude from the movie The Social Network. To sum up what so special about this Roy Raymond dude: for starters, he's the founder of Victoria's Secret, a name familiar to everyone living in this country. Raymond found said company because he found shopping for lingerie for his wife in a department store awkward and embarrassing. After starting up the company with $80,000, the company made half a million the first year. Five years later, the company was grossing $6 million and Raymond sold it for $4 million (not sure why). He tried another business venture selling children clothes and went bankrupt. Raymond committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, at age 46. Raymond is referenced in the movie The Social Network as a warning to Mark Zuckerberg of the risks of selling your company too early. (Source: Wikipedia).

It was interesting to note that when Raymond was mentioned in The Social Network, his second business venue, which left him near destitute, was omitted. Understandably, that part really bore no relevance to the movie. It did, however, mentioned that the company was worth $500 million two years later and Raymond jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Now the story implied that Raymond jumped off the bridge simply from the regret of selling his company too early, despite the fact that he was still a multimillionaire! I spent a couple days after the movie pondering about that (yes, should have done a Google/wikipedia search sooner, so sue me for believing that blurb in the movie was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.) Surely $500 million is better than $4 million, but how much does one really need? Studies (who knows how did them and how) showed that yes, money do buy happiness, but only up to a certain degree. Which makes a lot of sense. Nobody is happy when they have to constantly stress over rent money, grocery money, etc. Once the basics are satisfied, we have some desires, let that be nice clothes, nice cars, big screen TVs, fine dining etc. Then it comes a point where infinity + 1 > infinity.... Is having a $15 million mansion, 10 cars, and a private jet going to add that much to your happiness? Venturing a guess with not too much authority, I am going to go with no.

Introducing the second venture, which left him near destitute, into Roy Raymond's story. All of a sudden it made a lot of sense! He didn't jump off the Golden Gate Bridge because he had $4 million instead of $500 million. He jumped off Golden Gate Bridge because he went from your everyday MBA to a millionaire then to poverty! That left me with a speechless "Wow!" Many of us will never even make $4 million in our entire life, let alone having the lump sum. But if you are going to go from normal to millionaire to poverty, is it better to have never seen the $4 million?