Stephen K. Wolfram spoke at a YCombinator Startup School instance in 2005; I’m not sure how long the content has been online (possibly for the last 2 years) but I just saw it earlier. The whole talk is very interesting; here is a bite-sized chunk:
People have different motivations, of course. A lot of people think the big thing with companies is money.
Yes, if you luck out, you can make a lot of money. But it’s really rare that money carries people as a motivation.
You have to actually care about what you’re doing.
For some people, like me, it’s the actual creative content that they care most about. For other people, it’s the act of building the company. For others, it’s making deals. Or winning against competition.
But there has to be something you really care about.
And I think it’s important that if you’re the one who cares, you should be the one pushing things forward. If you’re smart, there’s a good chance you can learn the detailed skills to run a company. But to make the company really work, you need someone leading it who really cares about it.
You can’t delegate the core motivation.
