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Comment by breck | Hacker News Reader

> We were not interested in online stores. Some of the problems were kind of interesting, but neither me nor Robert nor Trevor thought of Viaweb as our life's work.

'How to find your "life's work"' might make a great essay. I think the majority of founders find themselves a few years in working on ideas they aren't crazy about.

In a sense founders get married to ideas too young, realize it's not a perfect fit, and then an "acquisition" is basically a divorce between them and the idea.

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http://paulgraham.com/love.html

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

Well you obviously weren't doing what you love with viaweb if your entire goal was to sell it to turn a profit so that you'd never have to deal with it again. And Steve's assertion is not about work ethic, it's about building a "real company". I don't think Steve would consider you to be a real entrepreneur. In his biography, it's stated several times how he doesn't want to make things just because people want them, which is directly against your beliefs in pandering to the masses.

I don't think Steve Jobs would ever say anything of sorts. Jobs did the exact same thing with NeXT. Does that mean that he didn't consider himself an entrepreneur? Human emotion plays a big role in our decision making and you can't have the same feelings for every project you start.

He didn't start NeXT with the intention of selling it. He was trying re-create Apple from scratch. Instead he ended up parlaying it into a take-over of Apple and re-created it from within.

I'm not weighing in on the definition of "entrepreneur" here, just pointing out why NeXT isn't a counter example.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I believe in "pandering to the masses," but maybe this will cure that misconception: http://paulgraham.com/usa.html.

"But the just-do-it model does have advantages. It seems the clear winner for generating wealth and technical innovations (which are practically the same thing)."

Today, wealth and technical innovations have separated quite a lot. A great programming language will make less money than the programs built upon it. I don't think this is entirely valid in the world of today, where open-source software is often some of the most innovative.

By wealth I don't mean money. You don't have to get paid for creating wealth: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html (search for "open source").

Well viaweb would be one example of pandering that you seem to have just admitted.

Awesome.

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