Hello everyone!<p>Thanks so much for your comments both here and on the original blog. I will try to reply to a few points raised here which I think misunderstand my argument.<p>1. "This thinking caused the economic crisis" ... I am having a hard time following the logic here. Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs ... how did they cause this economic crisis again? I believe the poster is conflating my argument with a view I never made, which is that people should focus on short term versus long term. I never stated this, and no one would claim that a person who only tries to maximize the profits for one day to the detriment of the company for ever would be a successful entrepreneur.<p>2. As for the bankers in this world, according to my view, they would be complete failures ... as they LOST money by the bucket loads.<p>3. As for the question of starting a company to change the world, I applaud you. You may be very successful in helping many people. But this would not put you in the same league as Bill Gates, Sergey Brin or Steve Jobs UNLESS your company can consistently make money.<p>To make my point perhaps a bit clearer, take for example another profession ... brain surgeon. You can be the nicest brain surgeon in the world. You can set up a company that offers free books to children. But if my father needs brain surgery, all of these are side considerations. What matters is whether you can perform the brain surgery successfully or not. That is it.<p>The same point applies to competitive athletes. They can be fine people, but if they come in 8th in a footrace, they have not succeeded in their job, which is to run faster than their competitors.<p>4. As for the point about twitter and other non-moneymaking companies, that is exactly my point ... they need to find viable business models. Linkedin is a company that makes money and one I consider to be an entrepreneurial success ... twitter, no (at least not yet).<p>5. As for Vincent Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, they are all successful scientists. They are NOT successful entrepreneurs, unless you stretch the definition of entrepreneur to a point where the term becomes meaningless. (e.g. "My mom is an entrepreneur because she gave me the wonderful gift of life," etc.)<p>If you change the definition of a word, you can prove any nonsense. For example I can prove that camels have wings and can fly ... just by stretching the definition of camel to also include all animals with two eyes. This is a logical fallacy.<p>So in sum, you can respect people like Jimmy Wales or Tim Berners Lee or Linus Torvalds or my mother. I certainly do. But they have not won the entrepreneur game. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin ... Yes. My mom ... no.<p>Love,<p>Anjali Sen
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