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Entrepreneurship is always about achieving a non-financial goal. "The best furniture in the world", "A PC on every desk", and so on. Making money is just a spe

Entrepreneurship is always about achieving a non-financial goal. "The best furniture in the world", "A PC on every desk", and so on. Making money is just a speculative side effect of doing something right. Worse, in that context, running after money pretty much is the best guarantee not to make any. Just think of it. A customer will not hand over his money to you, just because you run so hard after it. He will give money because he also believes that your furniture is the best in the world. The situation is obviously different for an established corporation. They are not about producing the best furniture in the world, but about maximally milking their existing cash cow in the furniture industry. So, yes, for them the bottom line is everything. Still, corporations also die with their cash cow. Bottom-line milking only works for a while. It will work, until it doesn't anymore.

mlboss 8y ago
All businesses are about money. Everything else comes second. Making the best furniture or PC does not make it a successful business. You have to do it with within budget, you have to take care of sales/marketing, smooch the investors, motivate employees, risk you health/relationships. No body takes so much pain without a financial reward.
- neokantian 8y ago
  > All businesses are about money. Everything else comes second. That does not explain why Facebook did not make money for the first nine years (2004-2012) of their existence. They were not worried about that. It also does not explain why Amazon still does not seek to make one dollar in profits. Amazon has not made profits for almost 20 years. Jef Bezos is simply not interested in that. Both examples still utterly destroyed their merely profit-seeking competitors. Successful entrepreneurs (Such as e.g. Steve Jobs) are evangelical. They staunchly believe in something. They also manage to convert staff and users to their belief by successfully evangelizing their views. A mere money grubber will never succeed in doing that. What is the mere money grubber going to tell the world? That he wants money and that the world should give him money? Seriously, what would be the message of a money grubber? Why would anybody believe him? They obviously won't.
- jadedhacker 8y ago
  I don't know if I agree with that last statement. Explain the behavior of war zone journalists or executives in humanitarian organizations. Yes, you need to be sure your needs are taken care of (money wise), but once you have that, there's a universe of possible non-monetary motivations that include stupendous amounts of pain (and many that don't that are just as worthwhile).

mlboss 8y ago

All businesses are about money. Everything else comes second. Making the best furniture or PC does not make it a successful business. You have to do it with within budget, you have to take care of sales/marketing, smooch the investors, motivate employees, risk you health/relationships. No body takes so much pain without a financial reward.

neokantian 8y ago
> All businesses are about money. Everything else comes second. That does not explain why Facebook did not make money for the first nine years (2004-2012) of their existence. They were not worried about that. It also does not explain why Amazon still does not seek to make one dollar in profits. Amazon has not made profits for almost 20 years. Jef Bezos is simply not interested in that. Both examples still utterly destroyed their merely profit-seeking competitors. Successful entrepreneurs (Such as e.g. Steve Jobs) are evangelical. They staunchly believe in something. They also manage to convert staff and users to their belief by successfully evangelizing their views. A mere money grubber will never succeed in doing that. What is the mere money grubber going to tell the world? That he wants money and that the world should give him money? Seriously, what would be the message of a money grubber? Why would anybody believe him? They obviously won't.
jadedhacker 8y ago
I don't know if I agree with that last statement. Explain the behavior of war zone journalists or executives in humanitarian organizations. Yes, you need to be sure your needs are taken care of (money wise), but once you have that, there's a universe of possible non-monetary motivations that include stupendous amounts of pain (and many that don't that are just as worthwhile).