{"id":1147,"date":"2010-10-29T11:02:43","date_gmt":"2010-10-29T09:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2010-10-29T11:02:43","modified_gmt":"2010-10-29T09:02:43","slug":"optimizing-for-happiness-when-doing-a-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/?p=1147","title":{"rendered":"Optimizing for happiness when doing a startup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tom-Preston-Werner.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tom-Preston-Werner.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Tom Preston Werner\" width=\"120\" height=\"160\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1161\" \/><\/a>Most of the time startups focus on getting investors and optimizing for how much money they\/we get out of it. But is that really the best strategy?<\/p>\n<p>Github founder Tom Preston-Werner doesn&#8217;t think so. Github has never taken founding from VCs or Angel investors. Tom believes that you should optimize for happiness instead and actually that could also have a positive effect on the money part of things. If you build it they will come&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I recently found a video of Tom giving a presentation at<a href=\"http:\/\/startupschool.org\"> startup school<\/a>. I really likes his way of thinking:<\/p>\n<p><object type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" height=\"300\" width=\"400\" id=\"clip_embed_player_flash\" data=\"http:\/\/www.justin.tv\/widgets\/archive_embed_player.swf\" bgcolor=\"#000000\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.justin.tv\/widgets\/archive_embed_player.swf\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"allowNetworking\" value=\"all\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"auto_play=false&#038;start_volume=25&#038;title=Tom Preston-Werner at Startup School 2010: Optimizing for happiness&#038;channel=c3oorg&#038;archive_id=272031754\" \/><\/object><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.justin.tv\/c3oorg#r=-rid-&#038;s=em\" class=\"trk\" style=\"padding:2px 0px 4px; display:block; width: 320px; font-weight:normal; font-size:10px; text-decoration:underline; text-align:center;\">Watch live video from c3oorg on Justin.tv<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>I was (as <a href=\"http:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/2010\/09\/15\/looking-into-git\/\">I previously mentioned<\/a>) at a talk by Tom Preston-Werner a few weeks ago at JAOO about Github and Git. He is a really great speaker and his star in my book did not fade because he and the other github-people sponsered a drinkup during JAOO. I got to talk to some really interesting people and that lead to an idea that I&#8217;m going to work on in the future. It seems like what Tom is talking about in the video really works.<\/p>\n<p>My main takeaways from Toms presentation: creating win-win situations, helping luck through proximity and being creative in not paying for things. It seems like I have been on the right path all along ;-).<\/p>\n<p>If you have to chance to hear Tom present, don&#8217;t miss it. He is a laid-back, really cool guy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most of the time startups focus on getting investors and optimizing for how much money they\/we get out of it. But is that really the best strategy? Github founder Tom Preston-Werner doesn&#8217;t think so. Github has never taken founding from VCs or Angel investors. Tom believes that you should optimize for happiness instead and actually [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[150,152,195,241,314,339,352],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geeky","tag-git","tag-github","tag-jaoo","tag-money","tag-startup","tag-tom-preston-werner","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/complexitymaze.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}