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Comment by jonpaul | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. The problem isn't that you need money to motivate you in the later stage of building your company. No, you're trying to be motivated by the wrong thing. You need to seek ulterior motivation. Passion, purpose, vision. I think that's how Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Richard Branson and countless others built their companies. It wasn't money. It was vision. Vision to change the world.

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True enough, I think.

Then the primary driver is not a vision of technology as such, it is political: If you aim to change (or rule) the world, bigger is always better (as bigger equals more power, people and money to change the world according to your vision) and you never run out of challenges.

I suppose a Leonardo da Vinci quote is appropriate:

    It had long since come to my attention that people of
    accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to
    them. They went out and happened to things.

Then I suppose it becomes mostly a matter of scaling the vision along with the size of the company. And the ability to keep the vision alive without drowning in administrative day-to-day tasks.

You mean "intrinsic motivation" not "ulterior," which denotes something else entirely :)

Thanks =)

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