Are the best startups like charities? An interesting essay from Paul Graham on the values ingrained in an organization's culture are key to its success (hat tip Arnold Kling):
Here's where benevolence comes in. If you feel you're really helping people, you'll keep working even when it seems like your startup is doomed. Most of us have some amount of natural benevolence. The mere fact that someone needs you makes you want to help them. So if you start the kind of startup where users come back each day, you've basically built yourself a giant tamagotchi. ... Once you have users to take care of, you're forced to figure out what will make them happy, and that's actually very valuable information.
Another insight from Graham, who by the way designed one of the earliest web apps and a Bayesian spam filter, is that a mission-driven startup has an advantage in attracting superstar talent, because superstars can always make money but not always with a purpose:
If you can attract the best hackers to work for you, as Google has, you have a big advantage. And the very best hackers tend to be idealistic. They're not desperate for a job. They can work wherever they want. So most want to work on things that will make the world better.
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