Why do I want to start a company anyways?

Obviously for money, power, fame, and women; the four pillars of a good life. I'm kidding, but most people assume it is largely for money because no successful business loses it. No, I'm after something more artistic. Often I'll say, "I want to be great", but what I actually mean is, I want to build great things. This is probably not greatness in the way most people think about it though. A quick detour; the definition of greatness, in the way I mean it, is best expressed by Rick Rubin in his book, The Creative Act.

"Measurement of greatness is subjective, like art itself. There is no hard metric. We are performing for an audience of one [...] Fear of criticism. Attachment to a commercial result. Competing with past work. Time and resource constraints. The aspiration of wanting to change the world. And any story beyond “I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is” are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness."

The point here being that greatness, in the way I'm thinking about it, is internal and subjective.

My primary artistic medium isn't music. It is technology. And the only way to consistently make great technology has been to create and sell it through a company. The commercial aspect might distort the art making it slightly less great. But the trade off is, if it is successful, it will fund more great tech products in the future.

I could work for a tech company or I could make my own. The question is, which one maximizes the amount of great things I get to build? To answer this, I'd like to tell a short story about Andy Hertzfeld, a major contributor to Apple's revolutionary 1984 Macintosh computer – a truly great product.

Andy loved working on the Macintosh team, and if I had the chance way back then, I probably would have loved it too. But after the computer shipped, the Macintosh team became very bloated. Andy pleaded and voiced his concerns to Steve Jobs who was convinced that the team needed to grow and grow up. With only two options, Hertzfeld eventually left Apple. After leaving, Andy went on to make way more money than he did at Apple building a scanner that worked with the Macintosh. But Andy felt he wasn't building the greatest things he could have been due to the problems back at Apple. His heart was still with the Macintosh, yet Apple had him in a pinch. As Steve Jobs so gently put it, "I want you to come back, but if you don't want to, that's up to you. You don't matter as much as you think you do, anyway." Ouch.

This lack of control leads me to believe that, long-term, starting my own company is the best thing for me. I don't want to be in a position where I'm constantly begging somebody else for permission to build great things.

Still, I'm going to have to look people – people with the same exact ambitions as me – in the eye and say come work for me, truthfully it is in your best interest. And I do believe there are times early in our career (and perhaps late in our career) where working for someone else is worth the experience or worth getting to work on a particular product. Hertzfeld is certainly one of those cases, but my point is, it isn't a long-term solution. Building my own stuff will maximize the amount of great things I get to build over a long time horizon. And I'm deadly serious about doing the work now to prepare & propel me for & into that future.