Comment: on Building to Flip versus Building to Own

On a couple of these posts.

To own, or to flip?

/commented/ To flip. But I don't want to flip it too easily, or it will be too boring. So building a long-term business, to flip, is more interesting.
.
Ok... so my perspective is that I have been basically retired and just killing time since I was about 20. (Not the highly-encashed kind... more the I have no further ambitions kind.) At that time, I had not yet started my commercial career, as I had been postponing it while I was studying. So when I was 21, I started studying commerce, and did (what I considered to be) the normal tour of duty... think tank / consulting firm / bank / startups / freelance... then back to studies. Anyway, started my first business when I was 31... been running it since... now I'm 36.
.
You should be able to tell that I can work on very long horizons... since I have too much time. I find it very amusing that the buzz in these 'startup' groups is all about being the 'fastest-growing', not about other things like being the most resilient, or having the best product, and that's generally motivated by the VC chase, I think, since the hot money by definition is looking for growth, not impact outside of financial metrics. I don't think it's my job to tell people how to run their business, or their lives, but I do enjoy encouraging people to think about non-trendy things, which may be valuable.

Do we spend too much time hacking for attention?

/commented/ I think hacking for attention is 50% of the game. The reason is, I don't actually have a motivation to build a company for the sake of building a company... so I'm only doing it on the off-chance that it'll sell at some point in the future. If I actually cared about the product or customers, then hacking for attention would be 0% of the game (introverted artisanal businesses, relationship/ecosystem welfare oriented businesses), and if I only cared about selling, then hacking for attention would be 100% of the game. I tend to think of it as a management imperative to go right down the middle... but that's a lot of arm waving, I know.