Wealth & Money Quote by Steven Bartlett

Bartlett’s line is a neat piece of founder-era jujitsu: it takes the most obvious corporate motive and demotes it to a byproduct. In startup culture, where “growth” and “valuation” often become proxy gods, this phrasing performs a moral reset. It lets an entrepreneur sound principled without sounding anti-capitalist: money isn’t rejected, just repositioned as the scoreboard rather than the game.

The intent is partly motivational and partly strategic. “Solve a problem” is a North Star that employees can rally around, customers can recognize themselves in, and investors can tolerate because it still implies a scalable market need. It’s also a subtle rebuke to hollow monetization tactics: the company that starts with extraction (fees, ads, financial engineering) eventually runs out of goodwill. The company that starts with a real pain point earns permission to charge.

The subtext, though, is that “problem” is elastic. In the language of entrepreneurship, a “problem” can mean curing a disease, or it can mean shaving three seconds off food delivery. Bartlett’s framing flatters the builder by casting commerce as service, but it also blurs the line between genuine social utility and convenient consumer friction.

Context matters: as a young entrepreneur turned media figure, Bartlett speaks from a moment when founders are expected to be not just operators but storytellers. This is a quote built for that ecosystem: short, shareable, values-forward, and quietly reassuring to anyone uneasy about profit. It doesn’t deny capitalism; it sells it as purpose-driven.