You have to respect John for seeing what type of company, within the bounds of feasibility, would make him happiest and pursuing that instead of going for as much money as possible. Very 37 signals ish. Of course, it helped that John had passed a threshold level of wealth where it probably didn't make that much real difference to him. In any case, you see a lot of people -- in particular the delicious guy who has been on here -- who've made choices for financial reasons they've ended up regretting.