It keeps me up at night that you could work your entire life in startups, do everything right and even work on good ideas, and you could still never really succeed. Then I realize that success (in terms of an exit or something similar) can't be the goal: I work on startups because I like building things (edit: things that have the potential to have a tremendous impact) and I want to change the world.
> Then I realize that success (in terms of an exit or something similar) can't be the goal: I work on startups because I like building things and I want to change the world.
While the above might be a commendable personal goal, startups are indeed created for their possible exit value. The vision, the tech and the kind of things you end up working on are commanded or at least heavily influenced by these circumstances. In that sense there isn't too much difference from working for an innovative established company (except you don't get a shot at the money pot).
The startups I work on have that as a top level goal, absolutely and 100% - as a person, you have to focus on and reward the process as much as the potential result, or it won't work. Paul Singh is fond of saying "we always celebrate the result, but we need to celebrate the process". Putting more people in the right process will produce more positive results, even if not all those people can achieve the massive results we're learning for.
I don't think "and of course, I also have to pay the bills" is an instructive part of anyone's life mantra. "The bills" are whatever you decide they're going to be - there's a very low fixed cost to staying alive, what you decide you need beyond that is up to you.
I have no trouble paying the bills now, but I've gone through times working on a startup where I lived on less than $4 a day, for example, without any regrets. That's not my life now, but the point is my life's goal isn't to maintain the high standard of living I enjoy now, it's to build things, try to change the world, and be happy. Having a decent amount of money does help the third thing in that list, but not without the other two.
It's great that you are in this situation. When its only you, well it comes down to the lowest denominator for living costs.
I think there is a lot of people that didn't start young with the entrepreneurship bug and ended up married with kids. With these people, paying the bills has a direct and noticeable impact on their family. I would say there is a lot of people in this situation and the dynamics of going "all in" with their idea just doesn't work the same.
I don't think you would argue with what I am saying at all, but there are many people that have obligations to others and we are not all single and only responsible for ourselves.
Being in this situation myself, I look at it as a optimization problem. Given the constraints I have, how can I optimize my situation to be successful with a company.
I understand that, and I'm trying to be as general as possible: paying the bills isn't part of your world view, what "paying the bills mean" is shaped and reified BY your worldview and goals. That's all I'm saying: "that's great, but you still have to pay the bills" doesn't have anything to do with a mantra by which you live your life, it's something you fit around and is shaped by what is core to how you want to live.
Changing the world doesn't mean changing EVERYTHING about the world, or the entire world, just a part of it. I want to make huge changes, but you also have to find a level of satisfaction in making smaller changes
Well, of course it's fickle to define what exactly constitutes changing the world. As per the butterfly effect, anything could be said to change the world, but let me attempt a definition: I'm thinking it has to be major (substantially different from what was before and affecting a lot of people, most of whom are and remains perfect strangers to you), deterministic (ie. what you did caused the change) and lasting (still identified as a change by strangers at least a few years after the fact).
Making that kind of change is really quite difficult and requires both luck and financial success (which in itself requires luck).
That said, I think it's perfectly honourable to be a good guy and do a good job without changing the world. My argument is merely that in my view, changing the world is a quite higher bar than "just" being successful.
