Give 'em Something Good
A month or so after Paul Graham and company started Y Combinator, that visionary mix of venture capital and summer camp, they took the motto “Make Something People Want.”
Graham talks about this in his April essay, Be Good —
Another thing we tell founders is not to worry too much about the business model, at least at first. Not because making money is unimportant, but because it’s so much easier than building something great.
He goes on to argue that the combination of these ideas — making something people want and not worrying too much about making money — is a working description of a charity. And that the intersection of charity and business is a really interesting one for our times. He sees startups acting like charities and wonders, Would charities work as startups?
