The drive is passion. In our startup world, money happens to often be a by-product of success. I have nothing against charities (on the contrary): it just happ

The drive is passion. In our startup world, money happens to often be a by-product of success. I have nothing against charities (on the contrary): it just happens that the successful entrepreneurs I do know in person haven't created charities but businesses doing things which bring money. An example: I have friends who wrote computer games on the Atari ST / Amiga / PC (they were from the "demoscene"). The "goal" when creating a cool game was not to "make money" but to make a cool game, that people would like and play and that would get great reviews (back then in printed magazines). Getting published by a known game company and selling tens of thousands of copies was the icing on the cake. Writing an "intro" or a "demo" (free for everyone) or a game that's going to be a "product" sold for money ain't the point. The point is about creativity, invention, exploration: it's all driven by the passion for our trade. There are, today, hard-workers working on startups which are going to be acquired by big companies who do still find the time to work on open-source projects when they get home. These people simply love what they do. The book I took the most pleasure in writing was one I knew wasn't going to sell well (it was about anonymity on the Internet [not in english], written... More than 15 years ago: when the subject wasn't fashionable at all). Yet I wrote it with passion, without counting my hours and even asking my publishers for more pages than what it was supposed to have. And I made next to nothing in royalties on that book. It's still the one I'm the most proud of. If you love what you do you won't see the hours fly by and money isn't the drive. I used the "made money" argument to drive the point that many of the hardworkers I know have been very successful.