[tomcar288]

When you build a business that makes money, you need to create value for someone. It can be anyone really: your neighbor down the street, people in another zip code or country, a demographic all over the world, etc. There's just one person in the entire world for which you can NOT create value for: yourself. No one will pay you to create value for yourself. This is the essential difference between work and play. Work is creating value for others. Play is creating value for yourself. Money and "Meaning" are far more mutually exclusive than people realize. the fastest way to make something UNfun is to get paid for it. Just try this experiment: imagine anything you want to do for fun, then realistically imagine what it's like to get paid for it. If you're really honest with yourself and understand the equivalent job, you'll see that it becomes quickly unfun the moment you get paid.

[claudiulodro]

This is a really interesting and clever way of thinking about it, and I think you've hit the nail on the head! I'm bookmarking this comment.

I've tried to start a bunch of businesses and side projects over the years in that intersection of money and meaning, and in retrospect that's been a big reason they haven't been successful: I created something with value for myself and then tried to find other people that would also get value from it. That's much more difficult, marketing-focused, and roundabout than just doing something that I know creates value directly and trying to find meaning in that.