One of our things is that money follows; it does not lead. So we want people that are fired up and passionate about their mission... and people that aren't so married to spreadsheets and thinking that kind of voodoo controls the future. Because it doesn't.

Purpose first, metrics follow

There's a real tension here that most people feel but rarely articulate: the gap between what gets measured and what actually matters. We live in a world obsessed with metrics, KPIs, and five-year projections—the assumption being that if you can model it on a spreadsheet, you can control it. But anyone who's done real work knows this is backwards. The spreadsheet is a tool for keeping score, not a map for getting somewhere meaningful.

What Gilbert is pointing at is almost heretical in business culture: passion and clarity of purpose come first, and the money follows naturally because people do extraordinary things when they care. It's not that financials don't matter—they absolutely do—but they're a reflection of something deeper. You can't reverse-engineer your way into a mission by staring at numbers. You can't spreadsheet your way into innovation or loyalty or impact.

The trick is that this feels risky in a world that demands certainty. We want the numbers to prove something works before we commit to it. But the best things usually start as a hunch, a frustration someone couldn't let go of, or a gap someone noticed. The spreadsheet catches up later, documenting what the passion already built.