
Ask HN: What motivates founders? - BevanR
I&#x27;m interested in the psychological motivations that inspire and motivate people to found startups, even when they realise most startups fail, that there is no clear direction or obvious answer to most of the problems they&#x27;ll encounter, and it is an awful lot of hard work, much of which not pleasant or in their skill set.<p>I know the obvious answer is &quot;money&quot;, but I suspect a deep answer is much more complicated than that; If it were that simple, they would probably satisfy that need more effectively (by many measures) through gambling than founding.
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hellbreaker
For me, at least, it is the extreme belief in oneself to accomplish something.
Whether it becomes the next billion dollar startup is second. I am doing it
because it is a challenge and not everyone can do it. Its much better than
working for someone else and being assigned to do the same tasks over and over
again.

The closest mentality to a founder I have seen are those of extreme sports.
Especially sports that requires laborious hours and determination to get done.
Like those that choose to climb Everest. Its tough and chances of injury is
high. But you keep climbing because you believe you can make it to the top.
You can't imagine going back down to the mundane life below.

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rl3
In my case it was initially just being extremely dissatisfied with my life and
deciding to do a startup. Which is kind of like realizing your car is out of
gas and deciding to push it across the desert for fun.

Eventually I found something which grew into pure unwavering passion.
Unfortunately that doesn't automatically translate into being able to execute
successfully.

The other reason was a desire for massive amounts of wealth. Not for the sake
of it, but because I'd love to be able to spin up large projects left and
right. Paraphrasing another comment: the deep desire to do things better. And
of course, _make the world a better place.™_

Funny enough, I spent about an hour writing a fairly heartfelt ten paragraph
reply to this question, until Firefox mobile crashed and lost it all.

Then I realized that reply was an explanation of what keeps me going, not what
motivated the decision to start in the first place. What keeps founders going
might be a far more interesting question, and certainly a more complex one.
It's a psychological minefield: career and personal life opportunity cost,
sunk cost fallacy, people depending on you. Much more messy than the simple
_why_ of starting.

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xiaoma
A deep belief that the world is doing it wrong and no ability to change large
organizations from the inside.

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pedalpete
Clearly, different people are motivated by different things.

I would suspect that anybody motivated by money is more likely to go to Wall
Street than become a founder of a start-up.

Not to say that founders are not in some way motivated by money, but I'd be
surprised if that is the primary motivation for the majority. If you look at
the most successful founders, I think you'll find they love what they do, and
the money, once you are successful, becomes secondary.

I've started a few times, and have ideas for other start-ups (nothing overly
successful yet). I don't think about 'what would make me a ton of money', I
think with respect to what I want, what is the world going to look like in 10
years in an area that I'm interested in. I have a vision, and I research if it
is a good opportunity, and I pursue that vision. Even when the signs are that
it is a financially bad opportunity, I find myself motivated by the vision,
and continue anyway.

Last year I ran a project (not a start-up, I never saw it as a business), and
paid the server cost for a year, as an experiment to see if others agreed with
my vision, if I could inspire people, if I could change some lives. It was a
really interesting learning experience. It was successful at first, more than
I thought, and then fell to pieces, but what fun!

The reason people describe founders as 'visionary' is quite simple, if you
don't have a vision, I don't think you've got anything to start.

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balazsdavid987
Gambling and founding a startup are two vastly different things, they are not
on the same scale. While gambling is a zero-sum game and you have little
control over the outcome, a startup creates value (or at least, tries to) and
you do have the ability to change/improve the product based on feedback from
the market. I might be too idealistic, but I believe this is what motivates
hackers to found startups: create value + take control of their lives.

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no1youknowz
For me, money is just the lubricant which then allows re-investment to make
the product, processes better and hire better people to them improve on those
further and become the market leader.

My motivation was that I was extremely dissatisfied with the status quo of my
respective industry. I knew full well that to achieve my own vision so to
speak, would be really complex, time consuming and hard to pull off. When I
realised this, the challenge was graciously accepted.

I could so easily start a venture to become an also-ran in a crowded market.
There are many competitors of differing niches in my industry that I could
immediately jump into. Do know, it's perfectly fine for someone to start a
company based on a niche and then try to be the best. I'm not knocking
sentiment. But for me that's not sexy, not what keeps me up at night. I want
to be a monopoly, one that changes how people perceive things and what they
do.

But ultimately, what I crave is the satisfaction that I started something,
which blew up massively and then really affected peoples lives.

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danieltillett
In my case is was circumstance - someone gave me a check and said go build it
after I gave a talk about my great idea. I was so ignorant that I didn't even
know I was founder.

What I find more interesting is what motivates founders to continue when
things get really, really painful. I don't have a good answer.

~~~
bbcbasic
I checked your profile expecting another damn SF company and pleasantly
surprised you are in Woollahra. Go Sydney!

~~~
danieltillett
Yes Woollahra is a rather nice place to run a company like mine :)

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DrNuke
As a tech employee your salary is 1/4 or 1/5 of your turnover for the firm and
this thought is unbearable to many.

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tixocloud
For myself, it's the challenge and being able to prove to myself that I can do
it. I love that there is no clear direction or obvious answer. I want to build
something and make my mark on this world so that I can tell my kids one day
that they can absolutely accomplish anything in this world if they set their
heart to do it.

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bsvalley
The freedom to create my own job and to be my own boss. That alone brings me
happiness. It makes me feel like a I have a much larger purpose in life, from
the mission I assigned myself to - to the amount of people who could
potentially be impacted by that mission (in a positive way). Last but not
least, if it ends up being a successful journey (in bussiness terms), as a
founder, I would get the ultimate recognition and satisfaction.

1\. Freedom

2\. Impact

3\. Recognition

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mooreds
Solving a problem, building something, helping customers. Having autonomy in
the workplace is a nice benefit too, but you can get that elsewhere.

Don't found a company for the money. The odds are so awful that you'd be
better served getting a job.

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BevanR
Thank you everyone for the fantastic answers.

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samblr
Belief in creating a change that they have perceived in their minds.

