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“I just want to build stuff” is often true if qualified: “…that a lot of people use”, “…that makes people’s lives better”, “…to further my plans for world domin

• dgreensp 13y ago
  I was reacting to this: Guy decides he wants to be a tech entrepreneur. He tells people “he likes building things” because that seems to be a publicly acceptable rationale for building a tech company…but super secretly he just sees starting a tech company as a means to generating an inordinate amount of wealth quickly in a way that’s more enjoyable than playing excel like a keyboard. I think many or most of us, especially in YC circles, do start a company because we "like building things" -- not literally just that, but it's a part of our motivation or identity to get inherent pleasure from building things. If you don't, though, I see no reason to fake it. It may be cool and trendy to be a maker at heart, but it's certainly no prerequisite for starting a company. We've really come full circle if we've gone from legitimizing and celebrating hackers and makers as founders to the point where people are posing as them to better fit a script. It sounds like cargo cult entrepreneurship or Zuck mania.