4 ms·

Yes, of course. Money is the goal of the business because the business isn't the goal of life. I've always approached work as a way to maximize my free time,

Yes, of course. Money is the goal of the business because the business isn't the goal of life. I've always approached work as a way to maximize my free time, meaning I want to extract the maximum value from as little work as possible. The goal being to spend the rest of the time doing the fun stuff. SaaS is a great way to deal with this because once the product is built you can ramp down your involvement in it to nearly zero. Other gigs I've had, when I stop doing work, they stop sending me money. SaaS doesn't have that problem. I can answer a few emails in the morning then if the sun is shining I can head off and do whatever I like with the day. Problem solved. So yes, the business is all about extracting the most money for the least effort. Because I have more important things to do.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Well said. I’ll take this one step further: Anyone who starts a business without putting profitability as one of the top priorities is going to have a hard time. In fact, it can be disappointing to some engineers to learn how much starting a business requires using off-the-shelf solutions instead of rolling your own implementation and even making compromises with “good enough” code to get things shipped. The entrepreneurs who want to design and code every part of the system by themselves and only ship it when it’s absolutely perfect are the ones who struggle to ever ship a product and get customers. Social media, HN included, has perhaps skewed public perceptions about things like money, profit, capitalism, and nebulous concepts like “passion”. There’s nothing wrong with starting a business as a business and treating the code as business decisions. In fact, it’s what you want to do if your goal is to get customers and make profit, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
- aristofun 5y ago
  > as one of the top priorities What if it’s the only priority? How would your answer change?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
tawanda-m 5y ago
The goal of a business is not to make Money. Money to a business is like oxygen to to a person. A business cannot survive without money, the body cannot survive without oxygen. So does that mean the goal of life is to breathe? Make sure you are breathing and go out there and change the world Make sure your business is financially healthy and focus on getting it to make a dent in the Universe.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Well said. I’ll take this one step further: Anyone who starts a business without putting profitability as one of the top priorities is going to have a hard time. In fact, it can be disappointing to some engineers to learn how much starting a business requires using off-the-shelf solutions instead of rolling your own implementation and even making compromises with “good enough” code to get things shipped. The entrepreneurs who want to design and code every part of the system by themselves and only ship it when it’s absolutely perfect are the ones who struggle to ever ship a product and get customers. Social media, HN included, has perhaps skewed public perceptions about things like money, profit, capitalism, and nebulous concepts like “passion”. There’s nothing wrong with starting a business as a business and treating the code as business decisions. In fact, it’s what you want to do if your goal is to get customers and make profit, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

aristofun 5y ago
> as one of the top priorities What if it’s the only priority? How would your answer change?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

tawanda-m 5y ago

The goal of a business is not to make Money. Money to a business is like oxygen to to a person. A business cannot survive without money, the body cannot survive without oxygen. So does that mean the goal of life is to breathe? Make sure you are breathing and go out there and change the world Make sure your business is financially healthy and focus on getting it to make a dent in the Universe.