**Source**: Not Boring by Packy McCormick ## Main Idea The best companies aren't built to get rich. They're machines that let founders do the work they actually care about, at scale, with other people who care about it too. The difference between great startups and mediocre ones? Whether the founders would still be doing this if they won the lottery tomorrow. ## The Lottery Test Simple question: You win a billion dollars tomorrow. What do you do? - Go to a beach and never work again? - Finally do that other thing you've always wanted to do? - Put the money into doing exactly what you're already doing, but bigger and faster? Only that third answer matters. Everything else is just building a stepping stone to something else. ## Examples That Get It ### Forrest Heath (Somos Internet) Packy was visiting Forrest in Medellín. Forrest was talking about all his infrastructure ideas: mining uranium from Colombian mountains, building landing pads for flying cars, adding metro cables throughout the city. Packy said something like "hope you make billions so you can do all this stuff." Forrest looked at him confused: "Why would I take money out of Somos? This is the machine I'm building to do all of that." The company isn't the means to the end. It IS the end. ### Cursor Brie Wolfson spent two months inside Cursor. Here's what struck her: zero talk about getting rich. None. Despite the valuation going up and up. At most startups (she worked at Stripe and Figma), employees are constantly talking about what they'll buy with their equity. Second homes, generational wealth, time off to travel. At Cursor? Nothing. Because the thing they'd do if they retired tomorrow is... keep working at Cursor. ### Elon (obviously) Sold PayPal and Zip2. Rolled everything into Tesla and SpaceX. Risked going personally bankrupt. He didn't just tinker with rockets in his garage. He built companies because getting to Mars requires other people, lots of money, and years of work. You need the machine to do the thing. ### Others worth noting Ian Brooke (Astro Mechanica) has built or owned 18 planes on his own money. Started a company to build supersonic planes because you can't do that alone. The Varanasi brothers at Meter. Sam Hinkie (who invested in them) said people would be shocked how little they care about getting acquired or going to IPO. That's just not what drives them. Zach Dell at Base Power Company. Willem Van Lancker said "the best entrepreneurs become their category." Zach's explanation of how his dad's obsession with Dell shaped him, and how energy captured him the same way, is worth watching. ## The Problem Roelof Boetha (former Sequoia partner) said there are too many startups. "There's a lot more talent than really interesting companies to be built." Translation: most people start companies because they can, not because they can't NOT start them. Y Combinator gets frustrated for a reason. There aren't actually dozens of 19-year-olds obsessed with automating customer service. Most are just optimizing for optionality and wealth. ## The Bhagavad Gita Angle कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ २-४७ "You have the right to work only but never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction." Most people work for the fruits. Rare to find people who work for the work itself. Rarer still to find a whole group of people doing this together. Packy thinks that last group is the only kind worth backing. ## What This Means for Investing Packy's take: "The longer I spend investing in startups, the more I think my job should just be to find the small handful of people who view their companies like Forrest does, and then put as much money as I can behind them." Stop asking about TAM and go-to-market. Start asking: would everyone here still be working on this if they could retire tomorrow? ## Some Nuances The work has to be big enough to stay interesting for decades. It can't just be a hobby that scales. Elon didn't dream about electric cars as a kid in South Africa. But the mission (sustainable energy, Mars) is expansive enough to sustain obsession for a lifetime. Willem Van Lancker's line is good: "The best entrepreneurs become their category, become their product." The work and the person become inseparable. ## Questions This Raises If I retired tomorrow with unlimited money, what would I work on? Am I working on that now? When I meet founders, are they building this to do the work, or to get rich enough to do what they actually want? Does the team talk about equity and exits, or the work itself? Does this founder need a company to do this, or could they do it alone? (If alone, maybe doesn't need venture scale) ## What's Missing Here The essay doesn't address: - Founders who discover their passion while building - How to tell genuine passion from delusion - Survivor bias (we only celebrate passionate founders who won) - Whether effective mercenaries can build great companies too --- ## Personal Thoughts This reframes the whole thing. Not "how do I build a billion-dollar company" but "what machine do I need to build to do my life's work at scale?" For my work: am I building this as the machine to do the work I'd do in retirement? Or is it a stepping stone to something else? Need to be honest here. The Cursor example really hits. At a company with a rising valuation, nobody talks about money. That's the cultural signal to hunt for. ## Things to Actually Do Add "retirement test" to founder diligence. Maybe make it an actual question I ask. When hiring, look for people who'd do this work regardless of comp. Audit myself every few months: am I working for the work or for the fruits? Pay attention to what people talk about. The work or the rewards? That tells you everything.