That’s cool. But why?
You see countless articles each week about businesses known as “Unicorns”. The term refers to private companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more.
Just about every aspiring entrepreneur you speak to, dreams of building the next unicorn. The question to ask is, “Why?”
If you were to ask the founders of unicorns like Uber, Snapchat or Airbnb, I can guarantee that not one of them will place money at the top of the list of reasons why they wanted to build their businesses. Their primary “why” was not to become ridiculously rich.
The founders of these incredible businesses started them because they were passionate about solving a particular problem, or about taking an idea or a dream, and turning it into something you can see and touch — something tangible, something real.
The greatest wealth comes from delivering considerable value.
Just about every single one of these unicorns did not make money for years. In fact, most of them hemorrhaged money at first. This is one of the reasons that the survival rate of new businesses is so dismal. You’ve no doubt heard the statistic that 90% of all new businesses fail within the first 5 years. More often than not, most businesses fail within the first 2 to 3 years.
Sure, there are many reasons that new businesses fail, but right now, I’m talking about those new business founders that quit within those first few years because not only are they not becoming billionaires, they’re losing whatever money they did have before they started their entrepreneurial journey.
Unicorns become unicorns by doing something no one else is doing, or by doing something better than anyone else is doing it, or by offering more value for less money than anyone else.
We can create billion dollar businesses, but we have got to first understand why we want to create those businesses. If the answer to “why” is “money”, the odds of success become almost zero.
It has almost become a cliche to say you want to change the world, but the fact of the matter is that if you want to build a billion dollar business, you have to. Changing the world doesn’t just refer to solving world hunger or eradicating malaria. Changing the world means that you create the kind of value that changes the way the world, or parts of it, does things. If you want to know if a business has changed the world, simply ask yourself if the way things were done before that business existed is vastly different to the way things are done now.
Uber has changed the world. Facebook has changed the world. So has Snapchat, Tesla, Netflix, Spotify and Amazon. They are all billion dollar businesses. Some have gone public, some have stayed private, but every single one of them started out with the goal of changing the way the world works by delivering unmatched value to millions of people.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to build wealth. Wanting to build something that generates incredible amounts of money is absolutely fine. But it is almost guaranteed that if that is the only reason you want to start a business, you will fall flat on your face.
Build a business that delivers immense value, and immense wealth will be a natural byproduct. Change lives, and your life will change. Netflix changed how we live our lives, and I’d say Reed Hastings’ life has changed quite considerably too 😀
So, before starting that business, re-evaluate your “why” and then decide how to proceed.
