Startups are hard: even for ultimately winning ideas, likely to see poor win/loss rate, unknowns, few resources, no 40 hour work week, etc. with 5-10 years to e

Startups are hard: even for ultimately winning ideas, likely to see poor win/loss rate, unknowns, few resources, no 40 hour work week, etc. with 5-10 years to exit or more likely, failure. Even when things go super well, they just go to your limit in other ways -- most of my male CEO friends went prematurely gray/bald/etc, irrespective if $30M co or $30B. I was just advising a new founder yesterday: one of the best advices questions I received when working through some ideas is which I cared enough about to do for the next 5+ years. Money can be the motivator, but extrinsic motivators are hard over long periods. The billionaire thing matters more if you are taking VC money, bc they need people (a) with big ideas and (b) willing to repeatedly increase company risk in exchange for VC capital and that unlikely shot of going from millions to billions, even when the numbers stop making sense. But for non-VC startups, (a) is enough!