Today I had two meetings with friends of mine who are founders of “make the world a better place” type entrepreneurial ventures: Ben Rattray from change.org and Brandon Conard from GreenZu. Both meetings reminded me of what it means to be a “founder”.

Founders are “vision holders”. They tend to have a mission. Above everything else, they are committed to this mission, this vision. They do their best to organize a team of people around this vision in order to move it forward. They are willing to go without pay, without any kind of reward, to walk into unchartered territory, and, to convince their teams to follow them, even if it is “into fire”.

I saw a tweet today that was something along the lines of, “My exit strategy is my death.” These are founders. These are the people behind startups. Their vision and mission seem to be all that matters to them. These are the people who, quite literally, change the world.

Have you hugged a founder today?