Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

2 quick stories:

1. My fraternity brother's father (a successful doctor) took the two of us out to dinner. He asked what I was studying. I told him computers. He said, "Good. As you know, I want John to study medicine. But if he didn't want to, I would want him to pursue computers. But definitely not law. I don't want my son spending the rest of his life chasing dollars." Strange remark. But somehow, it really left an impression on me. I've always wanted to have fun and make a difference, but never wanted to be like so many business people I've encountered whose sole purpose seems to be the pursuit of money for its own sake.

2. My mentor and first co-founder on the subject of money: "It's never about the money. And it's certainly not about us. Our first, second, and third responsibilities are making sure our customers get what they need. That being said, it we earn a lot of money in the process, what's so bad about that?"

It always grates me when people with lot's of money tell people who don't have lot's of money, that it's not about the money.

Money my not equal happiness, but a lack of money certainly equals stress and misery. And while people are being stressed and miserable, they're not at their best.

I think people would find it hard to be so nonchalant about the importance of money and the benefits it can bring if they were worried about how they were going to pay the rent, or if they had a sick kid they couldn't afford to treat properly.

Perhaps it's wrong place to ask, but ...

Does anyone have an idea how to get this "hunger for money"?

I get no pleasure from earning money and almost no pleasure from things I can buy. I find it hard to motivate myself to get rich despite the fact that I consciously know that it could make my life bit easier.

I think what swombat's calling out here is the difference between the social nature of startups, where everybody wants to look cool and do and say the right thing, and the actual nature of startups, where if you're not growing eyeballs exponentially or making something somebody actually pays you for then you're dead.

The startup world is a social community just like any other guild or clan. We have leaders, common dreams, mantras, and so on. It's become quite popular for really rich guys to tell us how it's not about the money. When I first heard this I took it at face value. Then I realized what they were really saying was you can't just focus on the money. That's a big difference!

Part of the danger in hanging out in places like HN is that it's easy to pick up on all the social cues of the startup world and miss out on the practical nuts and bolts of it. So we'll get our nerd on and discuss esoteric programming concepts. Or we'll rant at company X and praise company Y for basically doing the same thing. Or we'll vote up an essay by famous startup icon even if it's not that worthwhile. More to the point we'll praise one startup idea because it's "cool", then we'll shun another because it's unpopular in our social group.

I love making things people want. People show me they want them by paying me. I need the money, so this works well for everybody. Once I don't need the money, I'll still love making things people want. At that point, however, I need to be really damn sure I'm actually doing something that has value aside from just a bunch of people in my peer group telling me how awesome my idea is. And before I get there, the last thing I want to do is use their opinions as any sort of useful metric at all on what I should be doing. Money is a much better temporary proxy.

Money making is fine, but wanting billions is kind of weird imho. The goal of 'being the biggest search engine' is great, being a search engine and having the goal to make 10 billion $/month is not. Again, in my opinion.

He mentions 'feed the family'; no matter what your 'family' is here, with honest hard work you can do that without having too much money focus in your company. But yes, the bottom line needs to be solid and you are insane if you don't watch that like a hawk.

A better question is: Should you live your life through the morality of others?

If the answer is yes, then simply read what someone else says about making money and do that.

If the answer is no, then you're free and can do what you want.

I don't trust people who start businesses and say they're not interested in money. Money is one of your best gauges of whether you're doing things right. Not being interested in money when you're working on a for-profit enterprise makes me worry you're either unserious or disingenuous. That said, hardly anybody only cares about money. We all trade off money against other things -- free time, independence, and so on. I care about money, but I'd rather make a little less working on a project that'll genuinely make the world better than a little more working on something unimportant.

I am trying hard to get of out of the "don't need to make money" mindset. It served me very well for years: the decision that money was less important than time allowed me to travel the world for 10 years while having a small online business.

But now that I want my business to grow, I am really struggling with the fact that I can live with little money. This is fine with me, but the people who joined my project deserve better: they deserve a strong and stable company.

I am trying to find a way to "go for the money" even though my nature is not to. It's not easy. Thanks for the article.

TL;DR: Yes. Get that money. Get lots of it. Poverty sucks.

I left rural Jamaica to come to Kingston, the capital, in 2005. After my first year in college, I got a summer job with a telecom startup run by an American. My student loan was not renewed for the 2nd year, so I had to drop out, and got a permanent position as a sysadmin at the company. The pay sucked, but I didn't care: The family member I was living with wasn't charging me rent, and I was having tons of fun setting up IPSec VPNs with other telecom providers, configuring pfSense firewalls, creating SIP trunks, etc. I'd sometimes stay at work till midnight, just exploring and learning, and be back at work at 8:30 the next morning.

I was transferred to another arm of the company 6 months later, but wasn't getting along with the management there, and was fired. But it was ok (I thought): I had no living expenses. I spent the next two years pottering about, trying my hand at a few different freelance initiatives, none of which really stuck. That was also when I discovered that I was very creative, at least design-wise. After those 2 years, my father died. No life insurance.

This, dear reader, is when reality started to set in. This is when I got the slap upside the head that said, "Hey! Fool! You need to start making money."

I'd applied for a job a few weeks before his death, and I got the job, doing a mixture of bizdev, system administration, and graphic design (perhaps I'm one of those fabled 'designgineermarketers' :) ).

Immediately, I began getting strange brown envelopes in the mail, containing sheets with tabulated data on them, and a strange claim that somehow, I owed them money.

I was later to find out that they were called 'bills.'

The family member also started charging rent. About time.

The student loan people called. Time to pay the piper.

I'd been bitch-slapped. By reality. It hurt.

I was 23.

I looked back at all the time I'd wasted. All the money I'd wasted. How I'd been a burden to family.

I'd been a typical HN-reading, Ayn Rand-quoting, John Galt aspiring-libertarian. Slowly, I began to realize the role of luck and circumstance. I used to look down on the poor, writing them all off as lazy and not willing to work. "How dare they be poor and have a TV!", I used to think.

I changed my tune. A bitch-slap will do that to you.

I knew what real wealth looked like. The startup I had worked for had tanked, but the founder and I were good friends, and he was independently wealthy. He owned 4 Mercedes, and lived in a house so far up in the hills that the road wasn't even paved. We would drive around and he would tell me about his life, how he had been rich as a teen pop star in Britain, but squandered it all and was broke by 20. He went to America with nothing, but built himself up through determination and cleverness. He built a telecom switch for the cost of a PC, and loaded Asterisk (open source telecom software) on it. Re-sold it for US$6,000. It felt 'wrong' to me, but he taught me that it doesn't matter what you think it's worth, it only matters what they think it's worth.

He died 4 months after my father. His family didn't know where all the money was. To this day, he has not been buried. That was over 2 years ago.

Money.

Money affects our lives in so many ways that it's difficult to overstate. Wanna help out that friend? It's gonna cost ya. Wanna take care of your parents? Ditto. How many great relationships have been ruined because one party had to leave due to work? How many marital squabbles are about money? How many friendships are ruined? And don't gimme that crap that if they were good relationships, they would last. If you have a friend that is down on his luck for an extended period (say a year or more), that gets old real fast. He'll expect you to pay for dinner. And movies. And gas. And liquor at parties. Soon you're gonna start resenting him. If he had money, it wouldn't be a problem. It's just circumstances.

How many lives are wasted in poverty?

Is it any surprise that I want money? Is it any surprise that I have dedicated the next few years to the getting of money?

Whew. I need to stop. Or this will happen again: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025537

Edit: grammar

Relevant (and fun): F*ck You, Pay me. http://vimeo.com/22053820

Making money is difficult enough. Don't leave all that money on the table.

After seeing many responses which contain many paragraphs, I tried to condense this one down as short as possible:

Readers may find it interesting to reflect that this question, "is it okay to want to make money?", is not really much of a question in other religions, and ultimately stems from the Christian background of the Western cultures. In Indian religions, for example, doing well in business and earning a bunch of money are considered good actions, good karma, and will bring you a better rebirth. Being good at what you do is just part of being good. Now, it won't allow you to end the cycle of rebirth to achieve moksha/mukti/nirvana, because all karma binds you to the cycle of rebirth, but it will let you "climb the ladder" to a life where you are better suited to pursue these ultimate goals of self-annihilation.

So if you're a Christian the answer is probably "no" -- "harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" and all that. But the linked post is trying to utter something more Confucian or Hindu; it's your duty to make money to support your family, go and do your duty.

An essay that helped me a lot in coming to my views on wealth is PG's essay "Mind the Gap".

If you haven't read it, I recommend you check it out.

http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

Also good:

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

To quote someone who said it better than me:

"If you don't make at least a little money in the process, how can you be sure that you're creating value?"

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ux/traditional_capitalist_values/

I find there are three types of people who will try to make you feel guilty about wanting money. The first are people who have chosen non-lucrative careers and will want you to feel that your work is shallow. The second are people who have an invested interest in paying workers lower wages in order to make their money. The third are people who are young, in school and not yet working full time and paying bills.

Living your life based on money is probably not the way to find happiness. But it's good to know the motivations of people who would judge you for wanting money.

"When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is." - Oscar Wilde

Like it or not money matters. It matters more than you think, even if you take into account this statement.

While you are young you can go sleep anywhere, eat two minute noodles and go from hand to mouth without getting much into the rougher side of life. As you age, you get a family, you get kids, you fall sick, you need to tend to a thousand responsibilities and bills.

Want to put a dent in the universe? good! Sure do it. But before that ensure you have enough cash before you are 40-45 to not worry about getting up every morning and run to make ends meet.

Life can be a lot more rewarding if you have a financial comfort pillow to rest on and not to worry about getting fired, or loosing a job, or a market crash or you kids leaving you to stay away from you.

Just have enough cash in you pocket, you will be a lot more happier. Even if you are not, you can be comfortable sad with money than without.

This is one of our main points in a presentation my co founder and I give when asked to speak at events.

Our product has useful features for people who struggle to heat their home (our product isn't software, its made of plastic) and our VC sat us down (before they invested) and said that we needed to focus more on the making money side of things and not helping poor people - helping poor people would come as a result of being successful, staying in business and delivering on customer demand. His main point was that without aiming to make money then we wouldn't stay in business very long as no one would invest in us and ultimately no one would benefit from our product.

How you make that money on the other hand, well that's up for discussion, there are a multitude of unethical business practices that make the desire to make money seem unpleasant. Avoid those and wanting to make money is fine.

Making money almost always goes with creating value, but in some cases the optimal strategy to make money does not involve creating value.

If a business that treats money as its primary objective encounters one of these cases, it will defeat its value-creating competition and become a parasite to society.

Money is a means, not an end (unless of course you’re a rare coins collector.) I don’t consider myself a Silicon Valley insider by any measure, but from the outside it doesn’t seem like there’s an “It’s not about the money” culture. Billion dollar acquisitions and multi-billion dollar IPOs certainly reflect Silicon Valley’s acknowledgement that money is fundamental in any business process. Which brings me back to my first point: to reach any meaningful scale, anyone who wants to solve a problem or make the world more interconnected needs a myriad of resources. It would seem that making money is not only OK, but up to a certain point necessary; not to splurge on yachts and mansions, but rather to acquire the best tools and talent said money can procure.

Money is not inherently evil. What really matters is how you make it, and where you spend it. If you make money making people better off, and spend it making people better off, there is nothing wrong at all. Unfortunately some people make money making people worse off, which is where money might get it's bad reputation. This might happen if the people think maximising income is more important than anything else (which might or might not lead them onto a path detrimental to other people, but immoral practices are often so profitable). The people who make a lot of money making people happy on the other hand probably care about their income, but also care strongly enough about other things for it to influence their decisions.

The Economist had a very good column on this subject a little while ago:

> In living memory, some middle-class Britons would not allow delivery boys to come to their front door; the tradesmen’s entrance was at the side. [....] And their modern descendants, the middle-class intelligentsia who populate the continent’s universities and staff its public sector, have a tendency to despise the businesspeople who generate the wealth needed to fund their way of living. There is great distaste at the idea that political choices should be dictated by “the markets”; investors should just hand over their money and not ask whether it will be paid back.

http://www.economist.com/node/21541857

I believe this question is relative to an individual's current position in life. Let's face it, if you have been living in a really challenged position always hiding from creditors and living meagerly for some time the pressure to just get "Family Money" is at the forefront of every venture. There is nothing wrong with that. I am working 7 days a week on my startup and I have yet to get the family money. I want to make a difference in the world with all my heart and soul, and I would really love to get the family money out of the way so I can focus on making that difference. It is ok to want a little bit of comfort, that will give you the physical presence you need to make a difference.

Building something smaller to feed the family increases your longevity in the startup game. You can play longer with new ideas, let them develop as they mature, and lots more. Pay attention to whether people who look down on lifestyle businesses already have that lifestyle of not worrying about money.. easier said when that's the case.

Initially having something that pays the bills for you can be an important step learning the first business and marketing skills of ones life. Having these makes you more valuable and capable of not only fetching funding should it be something you want, but a lot more of it because you preemptively make business considerations as you go.

My dad has a great poster on his wall in his home office.

It says: SUCCESS - I've managed to eat and not be eaten and find a place to sleep every night.

Success is a personal measure, we often externalize it and try to measure it against other's perceptions. If you choose to measure yourself against people who think "Money is Evil" or "Greed is Good" then that is just a choice. No different then choosing to put sugar in your coffee or not drinking coffee at all.

I've always considered myself a passionate pragmatist. I've started many companies, sold some, bought some, crashed some and put some in mothballs. I love the creation process. It's my hook. At the same time I try and estimate the financial impact of those decisions and balance my passion with a pragmatic review of the risks. Sometimes I make boat loads of money and other times I am lucky to get out with my life. But always it's a balance of rewards and money can be one of those rewards. The reality is that the most rewarding parts are the people I meet along the way, the things I've learned and the passion I felt for those projects as I executed on them. If you look at money as just a game token like many other tokens in life then you might be ok if you don't obsess about it. I personally think often about how many people would be willing to take time out of of their busy lives to visit me when I die. It sounds morbid but it's also another interesting measure of your impact on the world. Don't focus on the money, focus on the tools you need and goals you have for yourself in your life. But know that money is just another tool that might help you meet your overall goals. That said you can become a monk and let go of all possessions and I know some people who have done that and they say it's the most rewarding thing they've ever done. But clearly its not compatible with the goals I currently hold in my life. Maybe when I get a bit older I'll change my mind. Because again, the power to change your mind is still yours!

I have managed for 30 years to follow my passion and the whole time I've managed to eat and not be eaten and find a place to sleep each night. I've done amazing things, met amazing people and learned more then I could have ever imagined was available to me. What more can you ask for in life?

The mistake people make is to toss any thoughts of making money to the side. As pg says, get ramen profitable as quickly as you can. That really changes your attitude, and allows for the long term thinking.

The article does not say want to make money at any cost. It just says want to make money. I want to make money doing things I love. For any job I am willing to do, I want to make sure my pay is as high as possible, for that job.

Lots of people saying how many jobs does not add value to society, and so people who want to make money are evil. That's not what the article is talking about! If you want to make money and don't want to do those jobs, then make money through other means!

It's ok to want to be rich, but wanting something you won't get is unplesant, so people often rationalize they are there just for fun.

Certainly for me it works that way - if it's hobby project, I can't fail at it. If it's business I do to be rich, and I'm not rich in 5 years, I've failed.

Having fun seems to be easier to achieve than commercial success, and for some people (like me) it's easier to do sth, if it seems achievable.

A lot of people here have said that their is nothing wrong with wanting to make money, but I have the opposite opinion: I do not think it is ok to WANT to make money.

I recognize that making money is required in order to live in a capitalist society, since that is the primary way you will acquire food, shelter, clothing, etc. I make money personally and recognize that it is necessary. How could I create software or volunteer if I can't even feed or clothe myself?

However, I do not WANT to make money. I recognize that capitalism is a system that depends on the exploitation of others, usually people I do not see or interact with unless I go out of my way to find them. We live in a world where there are many people who cannot feed or clothe themselves, cannot afford shelter, cannot have determination in what they do or the work they must take on. This is a world that I want to sincerely change to no longer require money. Isn't this the great future promise of sci-fi like Star Trek, that humanity will give up capitalism and exploitation and provide for every human?

The primary many readers here engage in software development is in a commercial context (myself included). However, I would much prefer to gather with like minded individuals to create software because I love to create software, not because there is a promise of a payout. Many others here feel the same way, but never forget that we benefit from capitalism while others suffer from it. I would rather remove money altogether than worry about acquiring more of it.

Amen!

Whenever I ask "startup" people - "how does it make money?" - I often get odd looks. The same people are usually on the look out for funding.

Yes, it is honourable to run a business for love and passion of the idea. However money pays the bills and keeps you in the game longer.

It is not so honourable to ask for money from investors when you haven't considered how your idea will generate revenue.

Don't strive to make money for money sake alone. There doesn't appear to be any correlation between money and happiness.

But I, like most hackers, enjoy building things of value. And people are used to paying for what they value (there are exceptions of course). I use making money, especially early on, as a validator and indicator of progress.

It depends on what you want to make that money for. To live a stress-free, comfortable, happy life and help your community/world in return with that money? Or to just spend all of that money on yourself in expensive cars, big houses and drugs. It all depends on what you use the money for...

I can't find the quote, but I think it was Dave Ramsey who said (says?) something like "You can't help others from a position of weakness". Broadly true, although even moreso from a financial point of view, and one which guides much of my views on money/work/business.

A simple and straight to the point thought. Nothing wrong about it for sure. After all, how long can you be creative and bold if you ain't got enough to "feed your family"?

There is nothing wrong with making money as long as in the process you do not hurt anyone directly or indirectly.

The latter is hard if not impossible which is where the system breaks.

> you need the opposite temperament: a hunger for money.

Wrong. It's easily leads one to make money a self goal, which a grave pitfall.

Asking if its ok to want to make money is analogous to asking if its ok to marry someone because they look beautiful.

> Some people have an aversion to making money.

Those people have culture. Obviously 99.95% of the Silicon valley have no culture.

Of course it's OK to want to make money. Your desires don't require the approval of other people.

You need to make a lot of money to finance your spaceship startup.

Good article, let money enrich your life and not define it.

Money is not an end, it is the means

Is it okay to want food?

Then you have your answer.

There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society.

The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative.

People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their lives better. Even hoarders drowning in needless stuff are spending the money to assuage the pain they would feel if they didn't.

The vast majority of software has a serious positive impact on the customers lives. We may wonder about Instagram, but instagram made a LOT of people happy. Making people happy is a positive benefit to society.

Plus, lets remember what money is. Money is a medium of exchange, its not the thing itself. It is a medium for trading your labor or your intellect. A ditch digger rents his body out at work in exchange for money. When he buys shoes, the money is simply they conveyance of the value from digging the ditch to the person selling the shoes.

When a software developer uses his brilliance to come up with a new program, he's trading his brainpower for whatever he ends up being with that money. Money is the medium that enables efficient transactions where barter failed. That's all.

Money is really another way of saying life.

People don't trade their life away, generally, except where it is profitable.

You make a billion bucks by making something people want? You've improved their lives probably by 7-9 billion dollars worth.

$7 for a movie? Worth more than $7 in entertainment to the person buying it... or they wouldn't buy it.

You don't get to be a millionaire by making people miserable.

(and I need to get a blog going, I think my comment is longer than the original article.)

Alternative questions: Is it OK to want to make money at zero sum games where your windfall causes other people's losses? For example roulette, poker, and trading cards?

Is it OK to want to make money at win-win games? For example restoring a vehicle, Writing a book or solving a new problem?

The problem here is that very powerful organizations in this country are daily trying to brainwash people into thinking that somehow the green slip contracts in our pockets are evil. Having money, or wanting money is morally suspect. These powerful organizations control media narratives, political talking points, church services, and pretty much every company in America who is interested in turning a profit from the masses.

Is it OK to get an education for yourself and your children? Yes. Is it OK to go to the hospital when you are sick? Yes. Is it OK to want to make money? No. Your money is morally suspect, take some out, and give it to me, there will be a net gain in righteousness in the universe when the money flows from your pocket to mine.

Answer: yes, sure. It's far more honorable to want to be wealthy than, for example, to vie for social status or power over other people. I want to be wealthy; I wish everyone were.

I feel like I'm an old (28) knight, having learned the hard way that people are not honorable. For the record, I've seen more disgusting behavior in supposedly "world-changing" startups than many people see in their lives, and far more than I saw in finance, which is supposed to be unethical and full of greed but (quite honestly) doesn't look very different from anywhere else. The most ethical of the 5 companies where I've worked was in finance.

First, it's not about what you want, it's about what you do. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have money. You should want to have money if you're smart. Why? Because money is a vote and the World's First Problem is that most decisions aren't being made my smart or competent people. So get out there, do great work, and see if you can make a mark. You're only doing wrong if you start making moral compromises to get money or influence. If you turn unethical, then you become part of the more severe World's Second Problem, which is that the few genuinely smart people in positions of power and influence are generally unethical.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to have financial freedom and autonomy. If you don't have these things, chances are that your life will amount to very little. That's not the same thing as wanting to be a billionaire, though. If your net worth is $3 billion and you're trying to get to $6B to show up that other guy, then your motives are probably not good.

Social climbers I find pretty revolting, but the desire to do good work and be well paid for it is, I've come to realize, honorable.

Now, bad people do slimy things for all kinds of reasons, and often those reasons have little to do with material gain. Sometimes it's status or vengeance, and sometimes it's just a desire "to see what happens". Malevolent curiosity is a powerful motivator having nothing to do with money or measurable personal benefit. Again, it's not peoples' motivations that make them bad or good. It's what they actually do.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I encountered far more sleaze in VC-funded startups than in finance, and I think I figured it out. False poverty. Now, I'd he hard-pressed to call a startup CEO making $150,000 per year "poor", but a lot of these people feel poor, given that a 27-year-old venture capitalist with no accomplishments to his name is making twice that, just because his daddy got him into Harvard Business School. When people get a sense that they "should" be doing so much better (being VCs instead of being founders with their hands out) they feel poor, they feel desperate, and they act desperate.

Finance has its share of slime, for sure, but the false poverty is less prevalent. Bankers know they aren't poor and that they're not allowed to act that way.

This might also explain why the politics and in-fighting in low-paying but "glamorous" industries like fashion and UES nonprofitistan are so much worse. Because these people are paid poorly, they have a sense of living on a precipice and will do anything to avoid falling off. Although this is also a false poverty (because most of these people could change industries and do OK) it has the same effect.

The conclusion of all this should be the obvious one. Greed isn't good, but hunger is worse.

yes