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Really thoughtful article about balancing money with other things, purposelessness and self-discovery as a path to creativity, and creativity as a business stra

Really thoughtful article about balancing money with other things, purposelessness and self-discovery as a path to creativity, and creativity as a business strategy. All the things he talks about that relate to my experiences are dead on. I've had similar thoughts about keeping any business I start private, and bootstrapping instead of seeking VC funding. Who wants to optimize for current needs, or short term profits? I would much rather give people something they can't even describe until they see it for the first time. If it weren't for mathematicians who were mostly motivated by aesthetics, we wouldn't even have computers. It's interesting that he describes having a kid as a way of avoiding or delaying self-exploration. I've found that self-exploration has been one of the hardest things I've done, but by far the most helpful, although I think that outside of solving personal problems the line between self-exploration and other sorts of exploration starts to blur. It's really about the exploration of appealing ideas for reasons that one probably can't explain to anyone else.

dasil003 17y ago
Yeah, this article concretized a lot of the types of thoughts I've been having recently about how best to live my life. I'm preparing to found my own startup in the next 2-3 years and determining my goals from the outset is incredibly important. All too often people are ideological about this subject. On the creative side people say "don't sell out" and on the business side people condescendingly say "oh, a lifestyle business." I guess I can respect the creative ideology a little more because it doesn't stem directly from greed, but I find both positions ridiculous. I want to make enough money that I can own a nice modest house without a mortgage, and that I can take my family on vacation anywhere in the world 2 or 3 times a year, but I don't want to sacrifice my relationships and the joy my work just to scale my business from $1m to $100m.
- andymism 17y ago
  I agree that both positions are ridiculous. I also want to add that all businesses are "lifestyle businesses." But it's how you define your lifestyle that makes the difference. I'd rather run a small shop that allows me to pay myself to build things, hack software, play with new technologies, and sleep in. OTOH, someone else might want to fly all around the country, sit in meeting after meeting, get on the cover of Forbes, and have fancy dinners every night. To each his own, but I'd much rather run a business that enables the former than necessitates the latter. But that raises a question, is it possible to take a business to scale without sacrificing the things you loved to do yourself? Derek Sivers is one example--he structured CDBaby so he could keep writing code most of the time and sold it when the business wasn't fun for him anymore. Any other examples?

dasil003 17y ago

Yeah, this article concretized a lot of the types of thoughts I've been having recently about how best to live my life. I'm preparing to found my own startup in the next 2-3 years and determining my goals from the outset is incredibly important. All too often people are ideological about this subject. On the creative side people say "don't sell out" and on the business side people condescendingly say "oh, a lifestyle business." I guess I can respect the creative ideology a little more because it doesn't stem directly from greed, but I find both positions ridiculous. I want to make enough money that I can own a nice modest house without a mortgage, and that I can take my family on vacation anywhere in the world 2 or 3 times a year, but I don't want to sacrifice my relationships and the joy my work just to scale my business from $1m to $100m.

andymism 17y ago
I agree that both positions are ridiculous. I also want to add that all businesses are "lifestyle businesses." But it's how you define your lifestyle that makes the difference. I'd rather run a small shop that allows me to pay myself to build things, hack software, play with new technologies, and sleep in. OTOH, someone else might want to fly all around the country, sit in meeting after meeting, get on the cover of Forbes, and have fancy dinners every night. To each his own, but I'd much rather run a business that enables the former than necessitates the latter. But that raises a question, is it possible to take a business to scale without sacrificing the things you loved to do yourself? Derek Sivers is one example--he structured CDBaby so he could keep writing code most of the time and sold it when the business wasn't fun for him anymore. Any other examples?