You can start a business. But I’m going to build an empire.

How hard is it to turn down $1 billion dollars? Or $6 billion? In 2007, Mark Zuckerberg turned down a reported $1 billion dollar offer from Yahoo! in order to keep working on Facebook, a social networking site that then differed little from its competitors. Similarly, just a few months ago, Andrew Mason turned down a reported $6 billion from Google for Groupon, a group-buying coupon site that could basically be created in an hour’s worth of coding. That’s A LOT of money, enough moolah to open many new doors, open many new opportunities, and open many new doors to many new 85ft yacht-buying opportunities. So how could Zuckerberg and Mason turn down all of that? It’s because they’re empire builders. Because they want to do more than just help a few people and make some money, they want to profoundly change and transform the world.

Changing the world is great, sure.

But they’ve got to be crazy, right? Zuckerberg would have made millions before he turned twenty. Twenty! But what’s that you say? A million dollars isn’t cool? Well, you know what’s cool? A billion dollars. And Mason’s share from Google’s offer (thanks to his 20% ownership stake) would have been just that– a cool $1 billion all for himself, enough money to buy a sweet private island in Malaysia ($35M), an authentic Jackson Pollock ($140M), a trip to OUTER SPACE ($35M), a swanky Gulfstream private jet ($50M), and still have enough money ($740M) for one crazy weekend in Vegas (that’s roughly how much a quality one costs, right?). Or, if you’re not the self-gratification and excessive materialism type, then just imagine how much good use a donation that large could go to.

So, it’s not about the money?

For them, at least, it’s about much more than that. It’s about a need to build something epic, something different, something terrific. And the years of hard work they’ve put in has inspired a vision that fuels them, their employees, and the world in a way that’s more meaningful. Like it or not, agree with them or not, they’re changing the world– and isn’t that exactly what entrepreneurs swear is in their job description? Zuckerberg isn’t just building a social networking site. Instead, he believes Facebook is creating a social backbone for the web where there wasn’t one before, transforming the way we interact with everything on the Internet, making it more open and more social forever. And Mason isn’t just building a coupon website that offers killer deals on Brazilian waxes and assorted jams. Instead, he believes Groupon is revolutionizing the relationship between consumers and small businesses, changing the way commerce functions at a local level in an unprecedented way. At least that’s the way they envision it. And to have a grand, epic vision like that, they’ve got to be a little crazy. But it’s a good kind of crazy. Because, after all, the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

They’re not afraid of failure.

Of course, they’re currently doing super well. Facebook’s valued (hat-tip to Goldman Sachs with a wink and a nod to the Fed) at $50 billion, more than United, America, Delta, JetBlue, & Southwest Airlines COMBINED. Zuckerberg’s among the richest men alive and the rest, as they say, is The Social Network. Even Groupon turned around and raised a $950 million funding round, putting their value at $15 billion. In ten years, they could be worth roughly $1 gazillion (now there‘s your tech bubble). Or not. Or they could fail terribly, like many have before and many will again, at doing something different. Mason’s famous for having his “The Next Web Phenom” Forbes magazine cover framed on a wall in the Groupon office surrounded by other magazine covers trumpeting what became future web meltdowns, from Netcast to MySpace, from AOL to Friendster. It’s a constant reminder that that it could be him next– and that’s the point. There’s no high-reward without high-risk. And the high-reward here is profound change, not moolah. It’s way past that. The high-risk? A waste of time, energy, and brilliance. A world in which everything’s the same. Insignificance.

Empire building is hard.

It’s unlikely Zuck knew exactly how he planned to transform the Internet when he started Facebook from his Harvard dorm. It’s unlikely Mason had revolutionizing local businesses in mind when he started a company called Bagel Express at the age of 15. And the same is true for so, so many others.

• But you can sell t-shirts. Or you can transform the relationship between artists and consumer products forever.
• You can rent DVDs. Or you can start fundamentally changing how people watch everything.
• You can sell dark-roast coffee. Or you can continue to celebrate the human spirit through innovation and respect the working class, one cup at a time.
• You can start a burrito food chain. Or you can give fast food integrity– making it sustainable, organic, and even more delicious.
• You can make some textbooks for the iPad. Or you can redefine how people learn content with innovative technology and creativity.

It isn’t easy. Empire building is empire building. It takes years of hard work, unending learning, undying curiosity about what’s next, becoming an expert in your field, and living what you believe in. They can’t be in it for the quick exit– because empire builders are likely going to work for more than a decade building a company that shifts and grows right alongside the world, keeping pace with the same thing it’s attempting to make better.

Empire building is a mentality.

It’s a mentality that forces you to ask what you’re in it for. For the money, the get-rich-quick & retire at age 30? For the industry, the conferences, the sweet “founder” title, and laid back dress code? For the high-end open bars?

I don’t know, but if you’re convinced entrepreneurship is in your blood, think about what the term “entrepreneurship” actually means to you. An entrepreneur can be many things, just like a “lawyer” comes in many colors and a “businesssman” in many suits. Without attaching meaning to it, it’s meaningless. If you’re here to build stuff that makes people lives better, awesome. How are you going to do that? What are you doing about it now? For what purpose? To what end? You need to do what’s meaningful for you– and if that’s changing the world, then shipping a product without a larger, bigger vision is going to be unfulfilling.

You don’t have to be an empire builder.

And that’s okay. Serial entrepreneurs are a different breed, for example. They find the right opportunity, crush it, exit, and move on to the next challenge. Most often these are not empire builders, but they’re still awesome– driven by either the goal or the process, the f-you money or the addictive ups and downs of startup life. Similarly, people who’ve read the Four Hour Workweek and found their “muse” usually aren’t empire builders either. They take a calculated risk, hoping to create a profit-generating business in a niche that will let them generate enough supplementary income to purchase that small island mansion in the Caribbean they’ve been dreaming about. They want overnight success– and it happens, for sure. But overnight success rarely turns into permanent success. And, except for the entrepreneur, the difference it can make in a community, for the world, for everyone else is marginal. That’s still pretty cool, sure. But it’s not empire building.

Empire building is crazy.

Empires beget empires– they can not only change the lives of others, but also fuel the success of future entrepreneurs. Inspiring people to not just believe in your vision, but to take ownership of it themselves and begin empire thinking, instilling a future generation of entrepreneurs with the motivation to do more. There’s a reason so many awesome entrepreneurs came from PayPal and eBay, and Microsoft. In today’s world, it’s Facebook’s Chris Hughes founding charity-focused Jumo. So there’s definitely upside, but there are downsides, too. Empires can go bad. And Empires can fail. The Roman Empire did it– and The AOL Empire sure is trying its darnedest to do it, too. But hey, The Roman Empire gave us democracy– and the AOL Empire gave us You’ve Got Mail, so it’s hard to complain.

We need more empire builders.

We need more people creating entirely new industries than people trying to make a few quick bucks in a market that already exists, raise an angel investment or two, and then sell their company to Google. We need more people who want to change the world than people who want to help you send better-looking email event invitations. We need more people reinventing the very things that need reinvention rather than creating a MVP product that generates a profit. Don’t we?

You can start a business. But I’m going to build an empire.

Or try my hardest to, at least.

(And if by chance you’re passionate about health & fitness and inspired to build an empire with me, shoot an email to derek [at] greatist.com. Let’s start building our empire.)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2011 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Ideas & Stories, Leadership & Orgs, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.