On one hand, in the "Rich or King?" formulation, I want to get rich. I don't want to be running my company twenty years from now. I'll want to retire (hopefully a very wealthy man) and go do other things that interest me - because there are far, far more interesting things to do in the world than there is time to do them anyway. Getting rich is, among other things, a way of simplifying the process of doing all those things that are interesting but not financially self-sustaining.
On the other hand, I want to change this little corner of the world, where a bunch of professional nerds like me suffer seemingly endless frustration and grief trying to make the computer systems that we get paid to work on and occasionally love actually keep running. I hate system downtime, in part because I hate the kind of work involved in downtime - digging through different systems for clues, calling buddies on other teams for their clues, giving status reports on the status reports, and beating our collective heads against the wall trying to get the information required to actually do our jobs - that is, get the downed systems back up again.
I admit it, I like working on big enterprise systems. I like debugging them, and I like making them better. It may be Stockholm Syndrome at this point, but it's pretty fun sometimes. And I like my colleagues who work on them with me, the special balance of discipline and imagination it takes to do ops and development on really big systems. I want to make their lives better.
And then one day I had this idea, and saw how I could make life a little better for all of us, and save time, money, and credibility for our employers in the bargain. And if I can get rich along the way, all the better.
Is that a mission? Or just a mission statement? Does it matter?
I think the mission to make a life a little better in a specific way is a true mission. Solving a frustration that you truly hate is a common factor in many successes.
That said, I also tend to see the most successful entrepreneurs much more concerned about the mission than retirement. Not sure if go on to other things meant Bill Gates style or tropical beach style. If you are truly mission oriented, then you would presumably care more about the mission than yourself. Retirement is an afterthought.
This gets back to the problem that the "mission" when we talk about software startups generally involves making a lot of money as well. If you want a software mission without promise of wealth for the work, you do open source (I actually briefly considered open sourcing this project, and I wouldn't say it is absolutely ruled out. But that's a one-way hash function, so there's no need to commit now).
This past weekend, I gave up most of the time I'd normally spend working on my startup on something else instead - playing in two different bands in a jug band competition! We're talking about people who actively opposed to paying anybody anything for the work, who fight tooth and nail to win temporary possession of a freaking waffle iron! And I'd be really damned proud if one of my bands won that waffle iron, too - it's been a prize for over 30 years.
What did I get out of it? My closest musical partner and I put together something of a dream band of some of our musician friends, and we jammed out Stairway to Heaven in under five minutes in front of 300 people. Financially, that's worth less than nothing. Emotionally, I'll always remember that moment.
Playing good music is a mission for me. Supporting the musical community and cultural history of Minneapolis is a mission. But those aren't missions that pay my mortgage.
This is what squicks me out a little about all the people marketing themselves on the internet who claim to have a "passion" to do <something boring>. They might find the work interesting and rewarding, but passionate? It sounds dishonest and self-serving.
I'd like to build something that is valuable, something that lasts, something that is truly hard to build in a multi-year way. Is that a mission? Maybe. Is that a passion? NO. The desire to create something big and powerful, that's passion. But the thing I'm actually creating? That's the map, not the territory.
Old age is already catching up with me. I'm in my late 40s, twice the age of the theoretical ideal founder. Conscious awareness of your mortality is a great motivator.
I have a working definition for "rich"... that is, have enough fungible wealth "in the bank" (low-risk investment) that you could live comfortably for the rest of your days, without ever again selling your time for money. By that definition, I'm not rich.
And frankly, middle-class life is a trap in that regard. You can be comfortable at the moment, and save money so you can be responsible for your own needs when you're too old and worn out to work anymore. That sucks. I've been on that treadmill a long time, and I'm getting the hell off it.
I already do things I love - but not as much as I want to, mostly because of the 40+ hours 50 weeks a year that a dayjob entails. I spend more time dayjobbing than anything I love, and I generally don't love the dayjob.
On the other hand, that makes me a lot more determined and thoughtful about my approach to a startup than a lot of the younger founders I've seen. I want to do this once. I don't want to have to do it again.
And a final thought on this... after a discussion many months ago with another entrepreneur (doing a medical device), I thought long and hard about my motivation. And here it is, in a nutshell... creating a company and a product that makes a real dent in how big enterprise software projects are done is the biggest thing I can realistically imagine myself doing. I'm aiming for the highest target that I believe I can hit. Getting rich is, frankly, just a side effect of that. And pride will carry me when love is no longer enough.
On one hand, in the "Rich or King?" formulation, I want to get rich. I don't want to be running my company twenty years from now. I'll want to retire (hopefully a very wealthy man) and go do other things that interest me - because there are far, far more interesting things to do in the world than there is time to do them anyway. Getting rich is, among other things, a way of simplifying the process of doing all those things that are interesting but not financially self-sustaining.
On the other hand, I want to change this little corner of the world, where a bunch of professional nerds like me suffer seemingly endless frustration and grief trying to make the computer systems that we get paid to work on and occasionally love actually keep running. I hate system downtime, in part because I hate the kind of work involved in downtime - digging through different systems for clues, calling buddies on other teams for their clues, giving status reports on the status reports, and beating our collective heads against the wall trying to get the information required to actually do our jobs - that is, get the downed systems back up again.
I admit it, I like working on big enterprise systems. I like debugging them, and I like making them better. It may be Stockholm Syndrome at this point, but it's pretty fun sometimes. And I like my colleagues who work on them with me, the special balance of discipline and imagination it takes to do ops and development on really big systems. I want to make their lives better.
And then one day I had this idea, and saw how I could make life a little better for all of us, and save time, money, and credibility for our employers in the bargain. And if I can get rich along the way, all the better.
Is that a mission? Or just a mission statement? Does it matter?