Recently this question became a somehow often discussed topic among my social contacts at work. We started talking about what should a new founded company do, what it purpose should be, what the mind of its founders should be worried about. Would it be money, or changing the world? Should it be a service or a product? Should the revenue be reinvested or not and so on and so forth.
What’s your own reason and plan to launch a company?
After all there’s lots of different reasons to start a company and of course some are more valid than others. Yet it should be your own decision. I am strongly opposing to the affirmation of the thesis that your only goal with your startup company should be “to change the world” no matter what. Well, I maybe got too emotional about a recent post I’ve read. It says: The Only Good Reason to Launch a Company. If you bother to read it, you will find the author swearing in the cause of changing the world and demonizing all the other reasons and possibilities. Frankly, I don’t like that. Why? There’s lots of business which did not “changed the worlds” yet they are successful ventures, making lots of people happy (their customers, their workers and so on) as well as they are profiting well.Should those business seize to exist? Or should people never try to run one as well?
What’s your excuse to go forward with desire and motivation?
As stating the “change the world” goal the author of the upper-linked post seems to try to convince himself in the reason of going on. I shall not question his strong sense though. My point is that as he turns out to be the founder of EverNote (which I like and use) he didn’t change the world so much. What is so “world changing” in one (over-simplified I would say) tool for taking notes? Recently I stumbled upon the Wunderlist and it definitely is times better, more useful and intuitive. Whatever.
Finally my point is that – I guess you should do your business and be ready to work lots and lots of hours for it in order to accomplish your goal for creating it – whatever it is. If you succeed in making at least a dozen people happy that is well enough. If your business succeeds to change your world it still counts as changing the world
(for the better of course).