Once you reach a certain point money simply doesn't matter. They mentioned Groupon: Andrew Mason knew that whatever happened he was never going to have to worry about money again. When you have that luxury, you go with your heart, and it usually isn't with the money. Even after he was fired he made out like a bandit.
The same thing goes for a lot of these founders. When you get a substantial buyout offer, you've done something very few people have. Even if you blow it, odds are someone else will fund your next startup. Either way you probably won't have to worry about money. Once a startup is funded, the founder isn't rich but the company usually pays the bills so he can focus squarely on work.
I don't think we should reject the allure of money, it goes against human nature. But the ultimate motivation is freedom. That's what money gives you; freedom to do what you love. If what you love is building a startup the money becomes insignificant, but having enough to let you pursue your passion comfortably is very important.
This is why joining a startup as an early employee may not be a good idea. The founders' goals and your goals may be divergent.
At some point, the founders are already rich, or are guaranteed to be rich, and are looking for self-actualization or ego. To achieve that, they'll gamble your guaranteed payout by not selling--either because they want to remain "in charge" or they want to shoot for the moon.
>>>>>>When you have that luxury, you go with your heart, and it usually isn't with the money.
This is so true. The best start-ups I've worked at where the ones where the founders had real skin in the game and were working as hard as the developers to get the company off the ground.
The two start-ups I worked that were miserable failures were the ones where rich founders had a lot of private equity and just burned through the money in short order. The most incredible was a CEO I had decided to buy season tickets to each of the professional teams in town (5 teams), and spent hundreds of thousands to remodel our existing office. The office part was surprising considering it used to house a large tech company who had about 80 employees. At our peak, our company had around 20 employees and had plenty of space.
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Once you reach a certain point money simply doesn't matter. They mentioned Groupon: Andrew Mason knew that whatever happened he was never going to have to worry about money again. When you have that luxury, you go with your heart, and it usually isn't with the money. Even after he was fired he made out like a bandit.
The same thing goes for a lot of these founders. When you get a substantial buyout offer, you've done something very few people have. Even if you blow it, odds are someone else will fund your next startup. Either way you probably won't have to worry about money. Once a startup is funded, the founder isn't rich but the company usually pays the bills so he can focus squarely on work.
I don't think we should reject the allure of money, it goes against human nature. But the ultimate motivation is freedom. That's what money gives you; freedom to do what you love. If what you love is building a startup the money becomes insignificant, but having enough to let you pursue your passion comfortably is very important.
This is why joining a startup as an early employee may not be a good idea. The founders' goals and your goals may be divergent.
At some point, the founders are already rich, or are guaranteed to be rich, and are looking for self-actualization or ego. To achieve that, they'll gamble your guaranteed payout by not selling--either because they want to remain "in charge" or they want to shoot for the moon.
>>>>>>When you have that luxury, you go with your heart, and it usually isn't with the money.
This is so true. The best start-ups I've worked at where the ones where the founders had real skin in the game and were working as hard as the developers to get the company off the ground.
The two start-ups I worked that were miserable failures were the ones where rich founders had a lot of private equity and just burned through the money in short order. The most incredible was a CEO I had decided to buy season tickets to each of the professional teams in town (5 teams), and spent hundreds of thousands to remodel our existing office. The office part was surprising considering it used to house a large tech company who had about 80 employees. At our peak, our company had around 20 employees and had plenty of space.