What is the meaning of a venture?
Alex Tuppurainen · September 2026
Meaning is the driving force of a venture or any business or project. A collapsing venture still running is a meaning factory. The founder who has lost everything externally and is still pushing forward reveals the depth of meaning that the smooth sailing founder never had to prove. Meaning isn’t revealed in success; it’s revealed under pressure. And the venture environment is uniquely brutal at exposing what that is.
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefor no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning. — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter I, “The Rival Conceptions of God,” p. 39.
This links to the question: what is the meaning of a venture, as:
If there were no apex of achievement, and therefor no entrepreneurs with an inexhaustible drive, we should never now what it means to settle. Setling would be a word without meaning.
The entrepreneur who cannot stop is not broken or greedy or ego driven. They are experiencing, without necessarily understanding it, a desire that was never designed to be satisfied by anything inside the system.
The apex of achievement exists. It’s real. But it’s not found here, not inside the system.
- Meaning cannot be self-generated, its existence points to an external source
- That source, external source, cannot be found inside the system it created
If there is a controlling power outside of the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe – no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 4, “What Lies Behind the Law,” p. 24.
A founder looking for meaning inside the venture (in the metrics, valuation, press, product) will always come up empty. Meaning cannot be a fact inside. The venture/founder is never the source. They are the expression.
Venture’s are driven by people… people on this planet… inside the system.
So is the meaning with founder? Employees? Product? Clients? Profit sheet? Is meaning something you find? Or something you build? Or something you bring?
None of those.
A stream cannot rise higher that its own source. But what is the channel of a stream? It is the people of this earth “us”. But we just concluded that people cannot self-generate or manufacture meaning. So, as a Christian it is said, Christ-life is un us.
Christ is actually operating though [us]; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts – that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 5, “The Practical Conclusion,” p. 64.
Meaning flows in the channel of the stream downward from its source.
Propel aren’t the source of meaning, we are the expression of it.
What is starting a venture doing at its most fundamental level?
Starting a venture is a person’s attempt to change something they cannot accept remaining unchanged. A founder is saying the whole world as it is, is not the world as it should be. But that statement only makes sense if the founder has a reference point for how the world should be. Which again points to Lewis’ argument, you cannot recognize the gap between what is and what should be, unless something outside the system/universe is telling you what should be.
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefor no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning. — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter I, “The Rival Conceptions of God,” p. 39.
…: just as, if there were no apex of achievement, and therefore no entrepreneurs with an inexhaustible drive, we should never know what it means to settle. Settling would be a word without meaning.
Light and the apex of achievement are structurally identical:
- Real but untouchable
- Generatable but not manufacturable
- Pointing to a source upstream and outside the system/universe
Meaning sits in the same category.
You cannot hold meaning. you cannot manufacture it.
You can only stay connected to the source and let it move though you, into your team, your product, your customers, your investors, the problem you are solving.
The moment a founder tries to hold meaning (in the IPO, the exit, the valuation, the applause) it disappears.
Just like trying to hold light.
Meaning was never yours to make or hold or keep.
It was yours to conduct.