Comments on: Startups with Something to Believe In

By: GeekMBA360

GeekMBA360 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:48:22 +0000

Great post. I found your post on nPost. I would like to add one more motivation to start a company: to live an authentic life in one's own term. I know this sounds ideal, but Great Harvest Bread is a great example of starting a business in an "anti dot com" way. (I wrote about it here: http://www.geekmba360.com/?p=885).

By the way, I didn't know Rescue Time is based in Seattle -- it's a great product. I use it daily and love it!

By: fijiaaron

fijiaaron — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:54:14 +0000

“what would it take for you to take a 30% pay cut?”

40% more pay.

By: fijiaaron

fijiaaron — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:53:31 +0000

That IS the western method of working. It's how western Europe and the USA succeeded, and it's a conscious effort within China to model it.

The one thing failing is that in China, the entry level employee can never become the big boss. While that's true to a degree in the USA as well (now more than ever), the escape valve is you can always quit and start your own company here.

By: GeekMBA360

GeekMBA360 — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:48:22 +0000

Great post. I found your post on nPost. I would like to add one more motivation to start a company: to live an authentic life in one's own term. I know this sounds ideal, but Great Harvest Bread is a great example of starting a business in an "anti dot com" way. (I wrote about it here: http://www.geekmba360.com/?p=885).

By the way, I didn't Rescue Time is based in Seattle -- it's a great product. I use it daily and love it!

By: fijiaaron

fijiaaron — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:54:14 +0000

“what would it take for you to take a 30% pay cut?”

40% more pay.

By: fijiaaron

fijiaaron — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:53:31 +0000

That IS the western method of working. It's how western Europe and the USA succeeded, and it's a conscious effort within China to model it.

By: dshen

dshen — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:36:15 +0000

YES – time to develop your own reason for passion at rescuetime, or bring it back!

re: shouting “hallelujah” – i believe that they were shouting “yahoo” LOL. too bad they don't shout that anymore.

re: leaving passion, going to bigCo.

i think maybe the only company that is not like that is Apple or maybe google. huge success, working on cool stuff, changing the world, people's eyes light up when you tell them you work there – where else do you get a chance to be part of that? it's really awesome…

By: webwright

webwright — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:54:01 +0000

That's a great point about Yahoo, and it brings to mind one of the early
motivations we had at RescueTime that I've probably grown too complacent
about.

Most people develop software that sucks (because most organizations suck).
When you actually have an active hand in a business that causes people to
say things like "RescueTime the greatest invention since sliced bread!"
(which someone said the other
day!),
it's pretty moving. That's nothing compared to Yahoo, where you were
literally changing the lives of millions of people (and they were probably
shouting "hallelujah" pretty often).

To leave something like that and go to BigCo, where you'll work on a tiny
slice of a HUGE piece of software that most of its users hate is a pretty
painful shift.

By: deezzer

deezzer — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:24:14 +0000

I think it's nothing too special that our consciousness understands we must bring something of value to our society, or die. This should be enough motivation to make wonders. Don't forget to announce the startup on fireroll

By: dshen

dshen — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:54:01 +0000

As you say, I also believe non-monetary motivators are necessary in early stage startups. Monetary motivators are almost always present (as in, the big windfall to gain a huge pile of FU money) with few exceptions like a non-profit or gain donations type of startup. But something else really needs to be there to hold onto people as they go back to living like poor college students for years.

In the early Yahoo days, we had passion and culture in addition to the monetary motivation. Our dream was that we were helping millions of people find their way around the internet and its a powerful motivator to feel like you are pioneering something new while helping users. Our culture made it all more palatable as we hired people who loved hanging around with; we better like hanging around with them because we worked around the clock with the same people for years!

These helped us get through the first few years of growth, and yeah it was nice to see the IPO in the second year, but remember that the stock had a bump but then settled back for a long time before the dizzying 100s of dollar stock values came around.