Ambition

Startup Lab
Aug 26, 2017 · 1 min read

People say that in order to start a startup, you have to be passionate about a specific mission. It definitely sounds awesome if you have it, but is it actually true?

  • Airbnb weren’t passionate about helping people to share couches, they were trying to make some money.
  • Dropbox wasn’t passionate about sharing files, the founder just wanted to build a successful company.
  • Twitch grew out of JustinTV, and they chose the gaming niche because it was the one that worked best.
  • Google weren’t even sure they wanted to be a company, I’ve heard they were considering selling it for $1M at some point.
  • Facebook was a side project, it’s not like Mark Zuckerberg was determined to connect all the people in the world before the company started taking off and working ridiculously well.

I think that among the famous founders, only Elon Musk is truly mission-driven, but even he started out with Zip2 and X.com(that became PayPal).

So maybe it’s okay to start a company for the same reason people climb mountains. I think that “ambition to start a startup” is a totally valid reason to pursue a career as a founder. You find your “mission” in the process of learning, and building a lot of things, and searching for ideas, and narrowing down your focus into things you actually care about.

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Startup Lab

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