Getting Rich is Not Enough

Getting rich is a fun outcome of a successful startup. Everyone likes to make money and have the freedom to spend it wherever you like. However, as a driving motivator for starting a business, getting rich is not a great one. First, the economics for most founders are not great, especially in the early days. Second, there are always easier ways to make money, at least current income, than starting a business. If money is the reason you go into an entrepreneurial endeavor, the temptation to stop when things go wrong is going to be high. You need something stronger to keep you fighting through the many obstacles that startup life will throw at you. If not, the odds are low you will make it to the payoff.

Let’s get the easy part out of the way. If you start a business and sell it for a big exit or take it public, you will make a lot of money. There really is no job on Earth where you can make billions of dollars as an employee. That is definitely exciting to think about, but it is really uncommon. I have written in detail on the compensation that startup founders earn. If you want to skip the article, I’ll summarize it for you — it typically isn’t much money. If money is what you are most interested in from how you spend you work time, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere. Maybe join a scaling startup where you can get a good salary and some equity upside. You won’t have to make the initial sacrifices that everyone founder has to make, and you can still make some serious coin if the business succeeds. Or take a regular job at a bigger company and bank a salary and bonus.

If money is your driving force, what are you going to do when things get hard? Not only will you be struggling with your day-to-day tasks for the business, but you also won’t be making much money at that time. This was tough for me with my first solo startup at a youth sports company called Sportal. I wasn’t just working for free, I was actually putting my own cash in to fund the business. While doing this I also had to do all the not fun, dirty jobs with the business. It was a grind, but fortunately I had a bigger motivation to make youth sports a better experience for kids, parents, and coaches. This served as my North Star, and it kept me going. If I was only driven to become a founder billionaire, I would have shut it down much earlier. While the business wasn’t an economic success and ultimately it failed to achieve liftoff, it was still a great experience for me. I learned a ton and met great people. Sportal also directly led to the founding of Beyond The Game Network, which I have been focused on for over two years, so I don’t think of it as a failure. If all I cared about was the money, I would have been crushed by the bad economics I experienced.

As you think about your own startup journey, make sure you have something that drives you other than money. You might have deep experience with a problem that you want to solve, that was definitely my driver at Sportal and now powers my co-founder at Beyond The Game. You might have a desire to make an impact on the world or a group of people you want to help. Those are much better motivators than money. When the problems come with your business, and I can guarantee they will, you will be more likely to dig in and fight on. Hopefully your business will grow like a rocket ship and you’ll make a ton of cash. If not, you will still be able to take something positive from the experience.

Thanks for reading today’s post, I hope this helps you evaluate your motivations for starting a business and find a strong driving force.