Mark Zuckerberg or Muhammad Yunus?

What's your vision for success as a start-up entrepreneur. Would you rather be Mark Zuckerberg worth tens of billions of dollars or Muhammad Yunus whose development of micro-credit in poor countries has lifted millions from poverty? (Oh and he'll never want for money as he won the Nobel Peace Prize and can pick up $75,000 for a speech). Of course, he could want for more, owning billions instead of millions, but how much extra satisfaction would it buy him?   

This is the way I crystalised a choice lots of modern start-ups need to make, and certainly, one that the company I've invested in — Speedlancer — may find itself making. Because any builder of a platform is a builder of a public good. And one can build it to maximise profit or one can build it to maximise the value it creates. But here's the thing. Because of the extraordinary productivity of platforms, certainly early on in their lives, the most successful platforms are often the ones that focus most on maxing out the value they create with monetising that value thought of as the next stage of the plan. As Paul Graham suggests the first, hardest problem is to build something great. He argues that that's why so many of the most successful start ups look like not for profits for the early part of their existence — they're just focused on their customers, their suppliers, their tech and how it all fits together. That's hard. 

Anyway, that's my vision for Speedlancer. I can't say it's official policy, but it's how I think it might change the world. So enjoy the interview, which was conducted for Speedlancer to give me an opportunity to convey these ideas. And if you want to watch the video of the interview, it's here.