Seneca's founder turned down lucrative offers to run larger companies. For him, the unique, "insanely gratifying" value of founding is the ability to create the mission from scratch and dedicate his life force to a specific desired change in the world, a power not available in an existing CEO role.

DeepMind's founders knew their ambitious AGI mission wouldn't appeal to mainstream VCs. They specifically targeted Peter Thiel, believing they needed "someone crazy enough to fund an AGI company" who valued ambitious, contrarian ideas over a clear business plan, demonstrating the importance of strategic investor-founder fit.

For mission-driven founders, an acquisition can be a tool to accelerate their life's work. Demis Hassabis justified selling DeepMind by framing the price as irrelevant compared to gaining an extra five years to achieve his ultimate goal of building AGI, asking, "what's a few billion dollars for five years extra of my life?"

Elon Musk's focus was on Mars as a backup for humanity. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis shifted his perspective by positing that a superintelligent AI could easily follow humans to Mars. This conversation was pivotal in focusing Musk on AI safety and was a direct catalyst for his later involvement in creating OpenAI.

Demis Hassabis chose to sell DeepMind to Google for a reported $650M, despite investor pushback and the potential for a much higher future valuation. He prioritized immediate access to Google's vast computing resources to 'buy' five years of research time, valuing mission acceleration over personal wealth.

A pivotal negative experience can completely redirect a prodigy's life mission. After being humiliated in a chess match, DeepMind's founder Demis Hassabis quit the game, believing the brainpower was better spent solving major world problems like curing cancer, which set him on the path to AI.

In an environment where Big Tech acquires promising AI startups, building an independent company requires intrinsically mission-driven founders. Factory's CEO argues a founder's "relentlessness" is the key defense against lucrative but mission-derailing acquisition offers.

CEO Aravind Srinivas grew up in a culture in Chennai, India, that valued being 'scholarly and well-read' even more than being rich. This deep-seated respect for knowledge became the core driver behind his mission to build Perplexity and democratize access to information.

Despite Meta offering nine-figure bonuses to retain top AI employees, its chief AI scientist is leaving to launch his own startup. This proves that in a hyper-competitive field like AI, the potential upside and autonomy of being a founder can be more compelling than even the most extravagant corporate retention packages.