what is purpose of company- Sridhar Vembu’s 2006sep6 Blog

On 2006sep6 Sridhar Vembu said
“Today at lunch, a AU student asked me “What is the purpose of this company?” So I asked him back “What is the purpose of your life?” He said “To live a good life”, and I told him “That is a good purpose for the company too!”
The purpose of the company is not to beat Google or to become another Microsoft or whatever. What happens if, god forbid, we actually achieve that purpose? The next day, we become purposeless, right? It happens to a lot of companies as they grow large — they have “achieved”, and so lose their, well, sense of purpose!
Life is a journey without a destination. The purpose of the company is to enable as many people as possible to have an interesting, fun journey. That means we will keep evolving, in keeping with the talents and interests of our people. I do not believe in words like “focus” as applied to a company — because a company itself is a collection of people, and subsets of that collection of people can have their own independent focus. As long as keep making money — pay for the tickets for this journey — we will do fine. Paying for our tickets is a good discipline to have”
- Sridhar Vembu
