Issue v0.10 – Letter from the Editor

Money isn’t important, doesn’t make you happy and is the root of all evil. That’s what I’ve been told, yet all around me I see people working hard to make more of it. I’m pretty sure everybody agrees that money doesn’t make you happy but nobody has ever asked me to lower their salaries at the end of the month.

Young entrepreneurs are lining up to raise money and build their companies and I’m pretty sure they do care a little bit about generating revenue and increasing shareholder value.

I often ask people how much they make in their current jobs. They don’t often tell me, but even if they don’t it says a lot about them. The way people defend their salaries, how some people are embarrassed about how little, or how much, they make is always interesting.

Still, I do see some changes in the way we deal with money. I remember a few years ago at our yearly TNW Conference in Amsterdam how almost every presentation had a strong financial component, and how the question on everybody’s mind was ‘how are you going to monetize that’. Then, at last year’s event I suddenly realized that people were talking about sustainable businesses, companies that would last 100 years, and generating revenue to build better services, instead of the other way around.

I don’t think we should either underestimate or overestimate the value of money. Ted Turner famously said “Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.” I’m not sure if I agree with the ‘life is a game’ part of his quote, but I do think that money is a great way to keep score of some things.

Don’t use it to measure everything, especially not happiness, quality of life and your sense of accomplishment in life, but feel free to keep track of it for certain other things.

In this issue of TNW Magazine we take a loot at how our perspective on money is changing, how business models are evolving and at some different ways of gaining more of it. And of course we will show you some books, movies and gadgets that you can spend it all on.