Quote
“Value is created when a person makes something useful and shares it with the world.”— Chris Guillebeau, in The $100 Startup (2012) · The $100 Startup →
Why it was said
Chris Guillebeau's definition opens The $100 Startup, drawn from 1,500 people who built businesses on almost nothing. It replaces the language of capital and scale with something a person with a skill can act on this week.
What it actually means
The sentence has two verbs and both are required: make something useful, and share it. Many people do the first and wait for permission to do the second; many start with the second and have nothing useful behind it. Guillebeau's founders did both at the smallest size, offered the thing to ten people they knew, and took the first payment before building anything larger. Value, in this definition, is not a plan; it is an exchange that has already happened.
How to use it
- 1Write the useful thing you can make with what you have now, and the ten people you could share it with by Friday.
- 2Take the first payment before you build the second version.