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Follow the advice in this post if you're looking for short-term profits and long-term mediocrity. If you're in business just for the money, then the points in

Follow the advice in this post if you're looking for short-term profits and long-term mediocrity. If you're in business just for the money, then the points in this post are valid. But, then you should probably also be concentrating your efforts somewhere else entirely. Give up software and become a loan shark or a banker or something. If you're in business because the idea of doing anything else is boring and distasteful, if you admire people who set out to write a page of human history and accomplished it, then there is nothing of value at all in this blog post.

philwelch 15y ago
I think worldchanging vs. just making money is completely orthogonal to software vs. banking. For instance, microlenders like Kiva probably "change the world" orders of magnitude more than the typical internet startup. Of all the businesses that add real value to my life, the number of them that "changed the world" can fit on one hand. The others are just honest business, and there's nothing wrong with that.
- jtheory 15y ago
  Kiva isn't a good counter-example -- the reason they're "changing the world" isn't because they're doing banking as usual with good foresight into where the current customers want to go next; they've turned normal banking practice on its head (both in the source of the capital, in who borrows it, and how much they borrow), and that's precisely why they're important. Though personally, I won't even argue that a startup needs to be "world-changing" to change the world. For example, a startup that simply makes it easier to get bottled water delivered directly homes in such a way that soon a huge population is drinking only bottled water... ...and no one (immediately) needs to fund the incredible environmental cost of trucking water everywhere to everyone even though they already have perfectly safe, good-tasting water available from their tap... ...so yes, that changes the world. This is why I personally found this article depressing (for @#$%s sake, why not sell people water purifiers if they don't like the taste of their tap water??) Every business changes the world -- mostly in a small way, though that's nothing to be ashamed of. Some in a big way. But all of them in some way. It's really, really worth putting at least 10 minutes thought into whether your startup, especially if it's gloriously successful, will make the world a generally better place (even if just "people generally doing good things will have an easier time of it"), or will it make the world a generally worse place ("we found a way to stop people from returning merchandise they don't want", or maybe "we make wasting time more addictive"). The OP doesn't even seem to consider putting 10 seconds into this aspect of choosing a business -- into which you'll invest many years of your life. Ugh.

philwelch 15y ago

I think worldchanging vs. just making money is completely orthogonal to software vs. banking. For instance, microlenders like Kiva probably "change the world" orders of magnitude more than the typical internet startup. Of all the businesses that add real value to my life, the number of them that "changed the world" can fit on one hand. The others are just honest business, and there's nothing wrong with that.

jtheory 15y ago
Kiva isn't a good counter-example -- the reason they're "changing the world" isn't because they're doing banking as usual with good foresight into where the current customers want to go next; they've turned normal banking practice on its head (both in the source of the capital, in who borrows it, and how much they borrow), and that's precisely why they're important. Though personally, I won't even argue that a startup needs to be "world-changing" to change the world. For example, a startup that simply makes it easier to get bottled water delivered directly homes in such a way that soon a huge population is drinking only bottled water... ...and no one (immediately) needs to fund the incredible environmental cost of trucking water everywhere to everyone even though they already have perfectly safe, good-tasting water available from their tap... ...so yes, that changes the world. This is why I personally found this article depressing (for @#$%s sake, why not sell people water purifiers if they don't like the taste of their tap water??) Every business changes the world -- mostly in a small way, though that's nothing to be ashamed of. Some in a big way. But all of them in some way. It's really, really worth putting at least 10 minutes thought into whether your startup, especially if it's gloriously successful, will make the world a generally better place (even if just "people generally doing good things will have an easier time of it"), or will it make the world a generally worse place ("we found a way to stop people from returning merchandise they don't want", or maybe "we make wasting time more addictive"). The OP doesn't even seem to consider putting 10 seconds into this aspect of choosing a business -- into which you'll invest many years of your life. Ugh.