Three good goals that pull against each other
The line lists three aims as if they sit together easily. In most years one of them has to come first.
Change the world. Build a business. Have fun.
In early 2001 Pyra Labs ran out of money, the staff left, and Evan Williams kept Blogger going largely by himself. The product was changing how ordinary people published on the web. There was almost no business behind it, and by most accounts it was a grim stretch to live through. Google bought the company in 2003, and only then did the three aims in this line sit in the same place at once.
Read quickly, the line sounds like a slogan. Read against his career, it is closer to a checklist of things that rarely line up. Williams co-founded Odeo, which became Twitter, and handed Twitter’s chief executive role to Dick Costolo last October. Twitter plainly changes how news moves, and it has been fun enough to draw well over a hundred million accounts. Its business is younger: advertising in the form of promoted tweets only began last April.
The middle aim is the one most often treated as a side effect, and it is the one that pays for the other two. A product that changes behavior but earns nothing depends on investors, and investors eventually want the business to exist. A company that cannot cover its costs does not get to keep changing anything. The fun goes quickly too, once payroll is at risk.
The aims fit best where the business model and the change are the same act. A marketplace that earns a fee each time a small seller makes a sale, as Etsy does, gains only when its sellers do. A subscription tool that saves a small firm hours of work each week is paid in proportion to the help it gives. In those cases, growing the business is how the world gets changed.
They fit worst where the change is the product and the revenue is bolted on later. Much of the social web of the past few years was built that way: users first, a way to make money to be found afterwards. Some of those companies will find it. Many will not, and their users will lose the service when the money runs out.
Fun deserves a word of its own. As a goal it is easy to mock, and some founders use it to justify building what amuses them over what anyone needs. Taken seriously, it means something harder. A founder who hates the work will not last the years a company takes, and a team that dreads Mondays does worse work. Fun in that sense is a condition for endurance, not a perk.
The line also comes from someone who has already had a sale and the freedom it buys. A first-time founder living on savings or a personal loan has less room. For that founder the order matters: build the business far enough to survive, and let it pay for the rest. The world can be changed next year by a company that is still alive.