Should people join a startup primarily for financial upside or for love of the work itself?

Paul Graham · published Apr 2006

Making money is not important enough to justify the pain of a startup, and there is nothing grand or heroic about starting a startup in itself.

Graham regards making money as a boring errand to be got out of the way, and finds it ridiculous when people take business too seriously.

source The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn

Emilie Choi · published Aug 23, 2021

The key hiring filter for a crypto company is finding people fired up about the mission and playing the long game rather than those there to make a quick buck

Because crypto is a form of money, it disproportionately attracts people excited about the money rather than the mission

42:32 20VC: Coinbase President & COO Emilie Choi on Building Coinbase Ventures into One of the Best Performing Funds with 0 Employees, How Coinbase Thinks Through Internal Resource Allocation and Prioritisation & Why, When and How To Hire Your COO and Head of C

Satya Patel · published Jan 30, 2023

The last decade's assumption that getting rich was table stakes for joining a startup was a delusion; people should join for the experience, the learning and the people, and expect only fair compensation

49:06 20VC: Homebrew's Hunter Walk and Satya Patel on Why $100M is Not Enough To Execute a Seed Strategy Today | Why They Decided not to Raise New External Funds | Where Are We in the Cycle & What is Truly F***** | Why Founders Should Take Secondaries Earlier

Ilir Sela · published Aug 4, 2023

Financial outcomes are not what motivate him; he is unafraid of ending up with little

Growing up sharing a two-bedroom Staten Island apartment with the extended family, they had very little but life was awesome, and what he actually enjoys is the process of hard work and pain

Scope: still grants that financial security matters; personal, not prescriptive

7:14 20VC: Why "Hire Great People and Get Out of the Way" is Total BS, Why Your Upbringing Can Make You a Worse Leader & A Bentley, Two Nissan Cubes and Becoming One of Macedonia's Largest Employers; The Story of Slice with Ilir Sela

Elias Torres · published Mar 21, 2025

People who join startups for the money should not do it — the right motivation is love of the game, and the financial outcome takes care of itself.

At every company he was part of he never calculated what he would earn; the appeal was creating, impact, customers and team experiences, versus the deadness of his IBM days where people left at 5pm not caring.

Scope: admits he may have been naive

40:22 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres

Eléonore Crespo · published May 9, 2025

She is not building Pigment for financial outcome but to build a company that scales for the next thirty years, so the priority is getting the best people around the table.

The goal is a massive, enduring business rather than a personal financial result.

0:00 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment

Paul Graham · published Aug 2015

The most successful founders are not driven by money; their secret weapon is that the company is their project, like anyone who makes things.

If they were money-driven they'd have accepted one of the acquisition offers every fast-growing startup receives on the way up.

Scope: about the most successful founders

source Why It's Safe for Founders to Be Nice

Paul Graham · published Dec 2020

Genuine interest in what you're building — treating the company as your project — is the most powerful motivator in startups and most ambitious undertakings, and it, not money, is what makes founders keep working when they could stop.

All billionaires could have stopped sooner by getting acquired or handing over the company; the ones who get really rich keep working because there's nothing else they'd rather do.

source Billionaires Build

Paul Graham · published Dec 2020

There is nothing wrong with starting a startup purely to make money, but those are not the startups that get really big.

Founders motivated by money take the first sufficiently large acquisition offer — as Graham himself did in his first startup.

source Billionaires Build

Miki Kuusi · published Nov 28, 2022

For Miki, building Wolt was never about the money — he turned down multiple acquisition offers, including one when broke at 26, because he wanted to see what the company could become

Different situations and stories mean different things work in different places; a piece of advice might apply 70% of the time and you may be in the 30%

Scope: includes his own advice

47:24 20VC: Wolt CEO, Miki Kuusi on Leadership Lessons Scaling to a Reported $8.1BN Exit to Doordash, Building Teams not Families, The Difference Between Trust and Safety Within Companies, How To Use Compensation to Create Culture & Why You Should Not Be Lookin

Davis Smith · published Dec 15, 2023

Entrepreneurs wrongly chase wealth; if they instead focused on purpose, on adding value to the world and on giving their teams a life-changing experience, everything else would work out

Focusing on money — how much can I raise so I can make as much as possible — is the wrong focus and ends up hurting them

20:11 20VC: Cotopaxi: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling $150M in Revenues and Challenging Patagonia, Fundraising Lessons from 100+ Rejections & What Founders Do Not Understand About VC with Davis Smith, Founder @ Cotopaxi

Paul Graham · published Oct 2005

Idealism and wanting to get rich are compatible, and founders driven by a cause rather than money alone make the most effective — and paradoxically the richest — founders.

As hard as people work for money, they work harder for a cause, and startup success depends heavily on motivation; Kiko's founders pay more attention to design than pure money-seekers would.

source What I Did this Summer

Paul Graham · published Nov 2014

The startup founders who end up richest are not the ones driven by money, so people who want to improve the world have a natural advantage.

Money-driven founders accept the big acquisition offer nearly every successful startup receives; those who keep going are usually motivated by improving the world.

source Mean People Fail

Hunter Walk · published Jan 30, 2023

Technologists focused on disruption should still know the history and shoulders they stand on, and should care about what they can create ahead of what that creation is worth

As a history major he values lineage; the Homebrew name comes from the Homebrew Computer Club hobbyists who met before they were entrepreneurs

57:16 Value creation and historical lineage over monetary worth

Akin Babayigit · published Jun 26, 2023

Founders fetishize grandiose meaning and mission statements, and there is a widespread lack of genuineness around it

Most people are actually driven by money, or like him by being good at something and wanting to win, not by the mission on the wall

15:05 Most people are driven by money or winning not mission statements

Harry Stebbings · published Dec 15, 2023

VCs need founders to be chasing wealth, because building a meaningful company has to translate into cash and liquidity

VCs are chasing an exit and returns

21:27 Vcs need founders driven by wealth outcomes to generate liquidity

Davis Smith · published Dec 15, 2023

Rejecting personal wealth as a goal is compatible with VC ambition: eradicating extreme poverty requires building a multibillion-dollar brand, so he wants the same massive outcome a VC wants

A massive business generates the profits to change lives at scale and inspires other businesses to rethink the purpose of business; he personally has enough and lives simply

21:40 Purpose driven massive outcomes align with vc ambition without personal wealth motive

Craig Courtemanche · published Dec 4, 2023

Mere interest in a problem is not enough to succeed as a founder; you have to love what you do

He endured years of strife and turmoil and would not have been able to sustain it without loving the work

9:01 Love not mere interest is required to sustain founders through difficulty

Paul Graham · published Sep 2009

How much you like the work is a third factor in achievement alongside determination and talent, but since most work serves other people's needs, creating the most wealth means prioritizing their needs over your interests and supplying determination to cover the gap.

If you love the work you don't need determination; but most work involves tasks imposed by others' needs that won't align with what you want to do.

source Most remunerative work serves others needs not personal love so determination substitutes for passion

Paul Graham · published Jun 2021

Working for money is fine as long as you're conscious of the motivation; the danger is unconsciously letting the need for money warp your sense of what work you find most interesting.

The money problem has to be solved somehow, and solving it efficiently is legitimate; the harm comes only from unconscious distortion of interest.

source Money motivation is fine if conscious danger is unconsciously letting it warp genuine interest