In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas, who won an Oscar for this role) delivers one of the more memorable monologues in movie history. Gekko is an archetypal corporate raider, and in this scene he gives a speech to the shareholders of Teldar Paper, a company he is planning to take over. He explains:

“The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated.

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”

I thought about the “greed is good” speech after reading an article in the New York Times about so-called “single-digit millionaires” in Silicon Valley who can’t get off the “golden treadmill”. They tend to be employees of successful start-ups who cashed in their stock options and are now worth between $2 and $10 million. But they don’t feel that it’s enough money, because the entrepreneurs behind their original start-ups (and the successful entrepreneurs in general) are much richer than them.

They own nice homes in exclusive neighborhoods, but the successful entrepreneurs have multiple sprawling estates in various exotic locations.

They take nice vacations, but the successful entrepreneurs own Cessna Citation X private jets.

Take the following three examples:

• Hal Steger and his wife have a net worth of roughly $3.5 million (which places them only in the top 2% of families in the United States) but he continues to work as a marketing executive for a new start-up. He is still looking for his big break, so he works 12 hours a day, plus an extra 10 hours over the weekend. In his words, “[A] few million doesn’t go as far as it used to.”
• David Koblas, a computer programmer with a net worth of $5 to $10 million, works at a 2-year-old search engine start-up called Wink. In his words: ““I’d be rich in Kansas City. People would seek me out for [corporate] boards. But here I’m a dime a dozen.”
• A final example is Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com. He’s worth about $10 million, which places him in the top half of 1% percent among Americans, but doesn’t earn him much respect in Silicon Valley. So he continues to work 60- to 80-hour work-weeks because he thinks that he doesn’t have nearly enough money to relax. In his words: ““Everyone around here looks at the people above them. You’re nobody here at $10 million.”

In the case of the non-entrepreneurs like Steger and Koblas, a lot of the insecurity comes from the fact that their wealth is based on someone else’s risk-taking. Said another way, these single-digit millionaires earned their money via stock options, based on the risk that the entrepreneurs that founded the company took, so they view their wealth kind of like winning a lottery. It’s a windfall, based on the luck of going to the right job interview, rather than on an entrepreneurial vision.

As I was reading the article, I couldn’t help but reflect that although there is much talk in Europe about creating an ecosystem to rival Silicon Valley, there is one fundamental factor that is rarely mentioned: greedy, risk-taking employees who want and need your start-up to be sold for 100s of millions of euros, and will do everything in their power to make it happen.

America is a rich country, because our workforce finds it difficult to relax. Our employees always want more, and are willing to put in the hours to make it happen. They also understand that, as Gekko explained, “you either do it right or you get eliminated.” Simple as that. And this Darwanistic ecosystem seems to be particularly exaggerated in Silicon Valley. This is why stock options work so well in the United States, because American employees are greedy professional Darwinists.

You can call it a number of different things, depending on your perspective. Americans would call it drive, ambition or hunger. Europeans would probably call it materialism, an unbalanced life or quite simply greed.

But I have it 100% clear in my head that I want “greedy” employees with an unquenchable desire to succeed and work long hours to help realise our collective dream. I want employees who get turned on by the idea of stock options.

Imagine being able to convince an experienced computer programmer like David Koblar or an experienced marketing executive like Hal Steger to come work long hours to make your start-up successful.

If, as the VCs say, the most important thing is by far is your team, then the ability to recruit and inspire successful and eternally motivated employees like these makes all the difference.

In this sense, greed (or ambition and drive, to use non-pejorative terms) is good.