In theory yes, but in practice there might be an issue whereby if you become an entrepreneur literally because you want to dollar-maxx and not because you really care about the thing you’re building, some perverse incentives are at work. For one thing, you might be tempted to take some very aggressive shortcuts b/c all you care about is extracting maximum value in the shortest possible timeframe, so you might run your business less than ethically and we’ve all seen where that leads.
The other problem, I think, from the standpoint of your returns, is that you’d probably be inclined to sell up way too soon because you don’t actually enjoy what you’re doing. I suspect the EA $$-max entrepreneur-to-give version of King Zuck would have accepted Yahoo’s $1 billion buyout offer in 2006, since he personally would have got $250 million, which was a lot of money at the time. But Zuck—against the inclinations of his early investors & board members, Thiel & Jim Breyer – had zero intention of selling. Apparently Thiel pointed out “well, look at all the things you could do with the money”, and Zuck replied with something like “I’d probably just start another social networking site but I like the one I have, so why should I sell?” And of course, Zuck’s way we got some amazing businesses (and incidentally more EA wealth created along the way via Dustin M). Perhaps we’ll even get the Metaverse, who knows?
Ultimately, do what you love is not such bad life advice, as corny as it is, even if you might have to do some unglamorous chores to get to a point where you can do that thing.
In theory yes, but in practice there might be an issue whereby if you become an entrepreneur literally because you want to dollar-maxx and not because you really care about the thing you’re building, some perverse incentives are at work. For one thing, you might be tempted to take some very aggressive shortcuts b/c all you care about is extracting maximum value in the shortest possible timeframe, so you might run your business less than ethically and we’ve all seen where that leads.
The other problem, I think, from the standpoint of your returns, is that you’d probably be inclined to sell up way too soon because you don’t actually enjoy what you’re doing. I suspect the EA $$-max entrepreneur-to-give version of King Zuck would have accepted Yahoo’s $1 billion buyout offer in 2006, since he personally would have got $250 million, which was a lot of money at the time. But Zuck—against the inclinations of his early investors & board members, Thiel & Jim Breyer – had zero intention of selling. Apparently Thiel pointed out “well, look at all the things you could do with the money”, and Zuck replied with something like “I’d probably just start another social networking site but I like the one I have, so why should I sell?” And of course, Zuck’s way we got some amazing businesses (and incidentally more EA wealth created along the way via Dustin M). Perhaps we’ll even get the Metaverse, who knows?
Ultimately, do what you love is not such bad life advice, as corny as it is, even if you might have to do some unglamorous chores to get to a point where you can do that thing.