Summary: Founders often feel conflicted between their desire to make a lot of money and their mission-driven goals. Money can be a powerful tool for building a fulfilling life and fueling ambitious projects. It’s important to consider personal values and motivations when deciding how much emphasis to place on financial success.
Many of the other facets of being a founder can be achieved in other roles. Do you want autonomy? Become an independent contractor or consultant. Do you want social impact? Start a nonprofit, or become a public intellectual or influencer. Do you want to build new things in tech? Become the head of product or engineering at an innovative startup you like and believe in, where you don’t also have to fundraise or build a company culture from scratch. Do you like the idea of building a company culture from scratch? Build a lifestyle business that can grow and run at your own pace, and on your own terms. (View Highlight)
Money is one of humanity’s greatest technological innovations: a standardized medium of exchange that allows us to multiply the value of our efforts while honoring the full diversity of human talents, needs, goals, and circumstances. It is liquid economic influence. (View Highlight)
Money can fuel companies, political advocacy, art, and research. More money means more ambitious projects. It can be used, generally, to build. More specifically, money can be used to build your own life along multiple dimensions. Everyone should want to make some money. Ambitious builders should be especially excited about the prospect of making lots of it. The more the better. (View Highlight)
If, at some point, he and his cofounders see a more lucrative market opportunity that they’re better primed for, they will have no qualms about modifying the “mission” accordingly.
I asked him what his ultimate end game was. “Wealth creation, nothing else,” he admitted as if he were bracing for some sort of moral indictment.
And why did wealth creation matter to him? Because securing generational wealth for his family is a top priority, he explained. And also because he loves the sport of it. (View Highlight)
he loves the sport of creating value, not piling up cash on pretenses. Besides, he said, he loves excellence too much to tolerate doing something he considers mediocre for any period (View Highlight)
Ironically, his approach struck me as far more “mission-driven”—guided by long-range purpose and principles—than what I’ve often seen in founders who check that box, many of whom prefer to virtue-signal about social impact than to put in the harder work of generating measurable economic impact. As Casey Rosengren puts “To do meaningful work in the world, you have to care about margin as much as you care about mission.” (View Highlight)
Here, again, it helps to re-orient toward a builder framing: What kind of life do I want to build? And what kinds of resources—monetary or otherwise—will I need to build it? (View Highlight)
Build for your best life
Consider your tradeoffs, prioritize, and revisit your choices regularly and actively to ensure your life-building project is moving in the direction you want. Only you can know whether the tradeoffs are ultimately worth it—this is your life to build. (View Highlight)
