Because It's There...
Why do entrepreneurs do this to themselves
“Because it’s there…”
- George Leigh Mallory on Everest
So you may have seen, I came up with a new idea earlier. Quite in fact, I came up with it around four months ago and for some reason sat on it rather than take action. Well, today I did and it’s been quite the day. Now it looks like this is really going to happen and while it’s very exciting, it’s also been an exhausting day.
I’m sitting here at 8pm having worked since around 6am, as is about usual, pretty much ready for bed wondering as I frequently do…why do I do this? There are so many easier, less stressful, less tiring ways to make money (and lots more) than to work in startups, whether it be working for one or working on your own.
I’ve done this for so long that I’m very realistic about the chances of making outlandish amounts of money from any given venture, which are slim to none (although of course I am very experienced and picky on what I work on so my chances are significantly higher than average). So I don't put in 14-17 hour days for the eventual payday. I’ve also reached a point in my life where I basically own and have everything I want and live a very comfortable life, which is a real luxury. The list of things I’d acquire given an infinite amount of money is extremely short and not even that expensive. So it’s definitely not about the money.
I’m also in the extremely unique position of having already founded an immensely successful company that had a vast effect on an entire industry. If I care to, I can walk into almost any restaurant in the US and get VIP treatment (I don’t tell them who I am usually). That is to say, I’ve already achieved my legacy.
To have fulfilled my need for success and legacy at age 40 is inordinately fulfilling (and humbling) but also leaves me going: well, now what?
And many nights, I’m without an answer. Well, I do know the next step: family. And I’m working toward that. But that’s not something you can just make happen like building a company. So while I deeply look forward to it, I just think, like many things: “All in due time.”
Instead, I wonder why I work so hard on ideas like setting up a company that’s going to short commercial real estate. And the answer is there’s some intrinsic motivation to do genuinely hard things inside me, and there always has been, that really takes over and is actually my primary motivator.
I frequently think about one of my proudest high school achievements. I had a rather old chemistry 2 teacher. In our 2nd week, he showed us how you could make a battery from a lemon using some copper and zinc. He then looked at the class and said very seriously, “I have issued the same challenge for 30 years. If any of you can light up even the tiniest incandescent bulb even the tiniest bit, you get an A for the year.”
Well, that settled that.
I spent weeks on it. Hell, I spent the first week just researching which was the bulb on the market that required the lowest voltage and amperage to light up and where to order one (I had to order a pack of 50). Then I spent weeks playing with sizes of the copper and zinc (turns out the surface area of the copper mattered a lot, not so much with the zinc), then a week playing with finding the lowest resistance wires between lemons, then finding the proper number of lemons in series and parallel for the right voltage and amperage, then preparing all the materials, procuring around 200 fresh lemons, and preparing a giant wood lemon holder, before carting it all to the science office at my school and arriving at 5am one day to set it all up.
But the look of shock on his face that he’d have to give a student a free A for the first time in 30 years when that bulb lit up was absolutely worth the weeks of late nights and endless effort.
I was so confident I could do this, I didn’t do one bit of the other work for the class during the six weeks it took me to make the battery. I would have failed the class had I not succeeded.
Which is really why I think we all do this…pride. To say we did. I was there and I did that. Not to even tell anyone. To know we achieved the impossible. Because to me, that’s why I do it. I solve impossible problems because impossible problems exist. I’ve literally started companies because people said a problem couldn’t be solved. Just to prove to someone it could be done.
So why? Because problems need solving…
PS:
For some reason, this makes me think about telling the stories of the companies I made in a bar, which I used to do, and remembering how many people never believed me. And that reminds me of the best piece of standup on bar stories of all time from one of the best standup routines of all time: