I sometimes ask founders this question (or some flavor of) when hearing their pitches. It is sometimes very revealing and one signal to help separate the pretenders from the contenders.
Last October, I heard Mark Zuckerberg talk at Startup School 2011 about why he started Facebook. He essentially said that he didn’t set out to “start a company” for the sake of doing so. He started a company because it created the most leverage (i.e. was the fastest way) for him to see the change he wanted to see in the world. He then talked about people starting a company before they know what they want to do and that the only way he was going to start a company was that “the momentum was so great that I had to start a company.” (Watch from about 25:48 of video here).
Literally three days later on November 1, 2011, I heard Jack Dorsey talk about the same topic at our summit for SV Angel founders. The theme of the summit was how to make the transition from being a founder to being a CEO, or the transition from “starting a company” to “building a company.”
Jack said effectively the same thing as Zuckerberg. He thinks about building a business as a way of “thinking about the idea that you want to see in the world.” And that the company is just the structure that lets the idea flourish: you need it to hire people to build the product, to get money from investors to hire the people and ultimately to generate the profits so you don’t need money from investors. The money is just the “oxygen” for the idea.
I thought about this when seeing Lauren Leto launch her new version of Banters today. She started one of my favorite things of all time, and when she was starting Bnter, I asked her the question above. She immediately and enthusiastically answered, “Because this thing should exist.” I thought that was an awesome answer, and we invested. Bnter doesn’t have the success of Facebook or Twitter (not yet!) but it’s an example of a company and founder who had similar motivations when first getting started.
Finally, I don’t mean to suggest that this is – or should be – the *only* motivation to start a company. In his talk, Zuckerberg used Jeff Bezos as a great counter-example to his point. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. But I think it can be helpful to think about why you want to start a company – in some ways, you can have just as much satisfaction and impact by joining one instead.
January 12, 2012 at 11:23 pm |
Thanks, David! No better investor to have on my team than you.
January 12, 2012 at 11:24 pm |
Very good post..also the same exact reason I started my current venture, because I wished a wireless headphone splitter existed for my friends and I to use while traveling and it did not make sense to me that the product did not exist..now it does.. http://www.mystreamapp.com or http://www.YouTube.com/mystreamapp
January 13, 2012 at 12:34 am |
I’m glad they finally re-branded. That original missing letter really through me off when mentioning the service to others. I thought it was some sort of clever play…. but then really could not come to terms as to why? The UI looks awesome though!
January 13, 2012 at 5:07 am |
Great post. This explanation trumps the whole “solving your own problem” reason for starting a company.
So often I feel compelled to tell my story in a sort of “It was so annoying to do x, y , or z.” Of course it’s important to bring something great and needed and loved into the world. But, I’d much rather tell our story in this way: there should be something out there to do x, y, or, z, so we’re going to make it happen — not just for ourselves, but for everyone.
February 6, 2012 at 4:43 pm |
[...] if you’re “thinking about the idea that you want to see in the world” (Jack Dorsey quote) then you’ll be leading your company to [...]
February 6, 2012 at 5:09 pm |
[...] if you’re “thinking about the idea that you want to see in the world” (Jack Dorsey quote) then you’ll be leading your company to [...]