Paul Graham, serial entrepreneur and big cheese behind Y-Combinator (funded over 450 startups, including Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, and Reddit) has a fantastic collection of essays containing all sorts of wisdom garnered over his years working.

Here’s my final highlight from a great one on “How to Do What You Love”

3. Prestige is opinion of the world, fossilised inspiration.
If you do anything well, you’ll make it prestigious

I’ve come across this sentiment in other places and for me it’s got great roots in one of the key modern leadership attributes; humility. The lesson I take from this is when trying to build something that people will love and get engaged with, do it for reasons that aren’t primarily about how you will be seen or rewarded for doing it.

Don’t embark on a project to make money. Don’t be in it for the awards you might get from backslapping industry pundits, be in it for the difference it will make to everyone involved.