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> If you didn't want money at some level, you wouldn't make a company, you'd make a social club or other hobbyist group. This is definitely not true. Sometimes
by wpietri 4y ago
> If you didn't want money at some level, you wouldn't make a company, you'd make a social club or other hobbyist group.
This is definitely not true. Sometimes companies are the best vehicle for what you're interested in. That's especially true in a society so oriented around business.
As an example, I new a guy who was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He retired, but was bored. He had an idea for a product, so he put together a small team to build it. In his phrasing, "Profit is permission to continue." He wanted it to be self-sustaining, but he never cared about making money out of it.
Or I used to be part of a bandwidth cooperative; we were a bunch of sysadmins who clubbed together to rent a cabinet for our personal servers. I just did it all on my personal credit card, but in retrospect it would have been much easier just to register a company and mostly treat it that way.
- pdimitar 4y agoI don't get your last, wouldn't a company be required to register income and not only expense? How would your example work?
- wpietri 4y agoMembers paid in, money got paid out to vendors. It would have been more convenient to have a separate company with its own legal identity and bank account and not be tangled up in the individual finances of one person. Even though the long-term goal was explicitly not to make money.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago> In his phrasing, "Profit is permission to continue." He wanted it to be self-sustaining, but he never cared about making money out of it. So... money was a requirement to continue. His goal may not have been to acquire personal wealth, but you clearly stated here that money was definitely a company goal. Otherwise, profit would not part of the conversation.
- wpietri 4y agoNope. Money was not a goal. Sustainability was. He wanted it to break even, not make money.
- carbotaniuman 4y agoHow does one break even without... making money?
- JohnFen 4y agoI think the point is that some level of income production is necessary to make it possible to do the project, but the purpose of the project is not to make money. A bit like how everyone needs an income in order to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, but for most people, the purpose of their life is not to make money.
- wpietri 4y agoIt's true that money can get made. That's just not the point of the operation. For example, if it were already breaking even and there were an opportunity to throw off more cash, profit-oriented people would go for the extra cash, but people with other goals could well not.
- hinkley 4y agoIn particular, a lot of failing companies are failing because the owner wanted control more than they wanted success. No matter how much they protest to the contrary. See also Kitchen Nightmares w/ Gordon Ramsay. People literally invite him in to save their business and then tell him to fuck off. If we're going to filter out all of the companies that have failed, are failing, or will be failing, you've only got a sample size of about 5% of all companies. At that point you're basically cherry-picking if you discount all of the duds.