If you walk into a roomful of tech hopefuls in Silicon Valley and
tell them that, many would stare blankly back at you. How would
you convince an entrepreneur that the exit is not the only goal?
I could point to 20 people who sold their companies and are
having the most miserable lives. They’ve got lots of money in the
bank, but they’ve sold their baby and they’re finding far too much
time with their wife or their husband, and they’ve lost a very
important purpose in their life. That would be one way I’d point
it out. But look, if they sell their baby, if they have a good reason to
sell it, and they don’t just buy a big yacht and get more and more caviar,
and then they use that money to create 10 more babies, and they
are the kind of entrepreneur that likes creating new things, then
yeah. There’s two sides to a story. Milton Friedman had the right
idea of saying profit is important, but he should have added, “Your
people are important. Your culture’s important. The moral way
that you run your company is important. How you deal with
the environment is important. Your responsibility to society is
important.” What we have to do is get every company to think like
that. And if every company thinks like that, then I do think we can
get on top of most of the problems in the world.
