Entrepreneurship | Starting a Business

“Elon Musk recognized the extraordinary demands he placed on SpaceX’s early hires. He therefore decided to reward employees who spent the majority of 2004 traveling to Texas for engine tests, and elsewhere. Anyone who spent two hundred days away from home in 2004 received an extra two weeks of time off in 2005, and an all-expenses-paid vacation wherever he or she desired to go. “It was certainly a huge gesture,” said Jeremy Hollman. “Only maybe ten or fifteen of us were eligible, and it was a testament to just how much we were all traveling and sacrificing.” All Hollman needed to do was tell Mary Beth Brown where he wanted to go, and she took care of the rest.”

Excerpt From: Eric Berger. “Liftoff.”

Our early emphasis on finding people with high SAT scores who could answer hard questions like “How many windows are there in Seattle?” produced people who were smart, but the process didn’t tell us whether they would thrive at Amazon. Jeff often said in those days, “We want missionaries, not mercenaries.” We have all encountered mercenaries in our career. They are in it to make a fast buck for themselves, they don’t have the organization’s best interests at heart, and they don’t have the resolve to stick with your company through challenging times. Missionaries, as Jeff defined the term, would not only believe in Amazon’s mission but also embody its Leadership Principles.

Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon – Amazon Link

“Gary’s business, like many others we’ll look at, can be described as a follow-your-passion business. Gary was passionate about travel and had found a number of creative ways to enjoy first-class trips around the world at economy prices. He started helping people do the same thing, first as a volunteer community member for several travel forums, then on a blog, and then on an individual basis for people he knew. Word got around—“Hey, Gary, I’d like to take my wife to Europe and I have all these miles … What do I do?”—and before he knew it, he had more requests for help than he could handle.”

Excerpt From: Guillebeau, Chris. “The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future.”

“Very occasionally the two would attempt to clean their apartment, and when they did, they would puzzle over the scary warnings on the package labels of cleaning products, which seldom even listed the ingredients. Using the products would make their skin burn and eyes water and it made them wonder whether the cleansers were safe at all, for themselves or for the environment. One day the two friends did a Google search on the items to see if other people shared their anxieties. They found that a surprisingly large number of people had been irritated using them. So they decided that they would make a better product themselves, one that was kinder to both the environment and to the people using it.”

Excerpt From: Blake Mycoskie. “Start Something That Matters.”