Wences Casares: What Motivates Serial Entrepreneurs?

My question is, you guys have been really successful with lots of ventures. What motivates you now? This is really, really hard work. What is it that motivates you to keep on going to start new companies?

You start. I'll give you the wrap.

I'm here for both of you.

I don't know, and I wish I knew. I think. I think to figure out the answer to that, I should go to a shrink and I'm scared they would fix me. So I won't go now. When I was on that sailing trip, I started by thinking that I didn't want to do business anymore. I was tired of business. I grew a beard, long hair, got a guitar, put it on a boat and started sailing around the world. Said, I'm never again going back to business. And if you are successful in sailing around the world, you start in exactly the same place you started. And pretty much the same thing happened to. To my thinking, by the time I was done, we were already working with Mickey and starting Bling Nation. But it didn't feel the same. At some point I realized that very early on I did this because I didn't have any money. And it felt very oppressing and limiting. So money was a big driver. But now I couldn't say that money is a big driver. So for me, I remember being halfway around the world with my wife in India, and she was asking questions about the culture and the history and the great things there are to learn about India. And I was asking the same people questions about their business and how it was working and the margins and how it could be improved with technology and sort of realizing that this is something that you do not because you want to or not because you need to, but because this is what sort of comes naturally. And this is what you like doing. Creating. You think these things from scratch and then they become something. And it's immensely rewarding to work with teams you respect and admire, to create things out of nothing. I feel very fortunate to be able to do that. And it gives me energy.

It's some of the same components. But I'll give you a very quick story. The other day, my daughter lost her first tooth. And my mother sent me a letter that I wrote when I lost my first tooth. And my letter said, dear Tooth Fairy, it's a mouse, actually, in South America. Here's my tooth. You know, our currency is very devalued. Could you please pay me in dollars?

This is five year old.

And I was seven.

So.

I think that there is a moti. I saw a letter and I couldn't show it to my daughter. I don't have the strength to show it, but I think it's something that. It's an energy that wakes you up. It's like every morning you put your fingers to the plug and you just get sparked when you get up. Having the chance to work, to discuss, because that's what we mostly do every day. It's something that. It's invigorating being surrounded by people that you admire. I mean, in this room, I know a few of you, and just if I had written that someday I would have met some of you, had spent time, have read books about people here or just socially, it would just blow my mind away. And that's what drives me. It's this aspect that there's a lot to be done. And the question. Every time I see something, I'm always trying to figure out what's the business there and what's going on. I can, you know, everything. I mean, even this campus. I was walking to, this building, I was trying to make the mathematics work in my head. But it has to do with that. Is that motivation to really interact with people that you would like to learn more from? We do it ourselves. We do it with the teams that we surround ourselves with. We do it with the people that we want to invest with and go invest with. And it's just something that my wife, who's now. She's giving up, and she just says, let's go ahead, whatever you say, and it's a lot of fun.