4 ms·

Say you founded a company tomorrow which started rocketing on unicorn tracjectory, but wanted to do better. What words or actions could you invoke that would a

Say you founded a company tomorrow which started rocketing on unicorn tracjectory, but wanted to do better. What words or actions could you invoke that would allow it to be distinguished from what some previously friendly sounding companies said or did during their ascent?

airstrike 8y ago
D̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶e̶v̶i̶l̶
toomuchtodo 8y ago
"We welcome and will assist in the implementation of regulation and oversight by an independent entity with the authority to sanction us, with penalties up to and including the dissolution of our company and pursuing company officers directly". Very similar to the game theory experiment of having a piece of cake to cut: one person gets to cut, the other person gets to pick the piece they want. You have to handcuff yourself to doing the right thing. Your decisions about "being evil" then become easy; you simply can't pick those paths knowing you've locked in the consequences.
SwellJoe 8y ago
"Make most of your money from something other than advertising." But, that doesn't account for Amazon who have become (or were always?) evil in their own special ways.
- 0003 8y ago
  Even so, https://advertising.amazon.com/ https://advertising.amazon.com/
opportune 8y ago
I think the only way to stay true to a well-meaning mission statement is to not go public, but that’s kind of a non-starter for most VC backed companies. And even if you do stay private for a long time, the death/departure/retirement of the founders would be likely to result in acquisition either by PE/a public company or preempt an IPO
- jniedrauer 8y ago
  Another option, specifically for tech companies, is to create free products and use support contracts as a revenue generator. Companies that follow this model include Red Hat and Elastic. They've both been tremendously successful while adding a lot of good to the world. The open source community keeps them honest.
- SwellJoe 8y ago
  I'm not sure I buy that. The idea behind a public company is (in theory) much more democratic than a closely held company, and it used to be that public companies were viewed and regulated that way. But, when the vast majority of shares are held by a few, and when regulatory authority has been decimated, it loses any sense of democratic responsibility. We kinda have the worst of both worlds.
bhauer 8y ago
So much of what concerns me about the modern tech titans is the amount of data they collect and process. So if you were to be at the helm of an up and coming unicorn, the way to differentiate yourself is: 1. Provide your service with the option of collecting nearly zero or precisely zero data about customers if they so choose. In order to do this, it may be necessary to provide your services as open source software they can operate themselves on hosts they own or lease. 2. Adopt a comprehensive privacy-respecting mission statement analogous to the portions of the Mozilla manifesto [1] pertaining to privacy. 3. Provide full transparency about when, how, and in what measure data is collected about users who have not opted out via #1 above. 4. Ensure that your revenue streams are firewalled from user data. Never allow user data to be considered a potential source of revenue. 5. To the extent feasible under the law, provide transparency about revenue and finances. Provide evidence that the business is healthy thanks to voluntary exchange of money from principal users for products or services, and not exchanges that are involuntary for users. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
pdkl95 8y ago
Words on their own are not worth much in the long run. It's easy to pursue well-meaning plans on good days when everything is working like it's supposed to and everywhere you go people seem to be talking about the amazing stuff your "unicorn trajectory" will create. Cory Doctorow had a useful analogy[1]: if you're trying to lose weight, most of the time it isn't very difficult to resist tempting siren's call from the box of cookies in your pantry. Obviously not buying the tempting snack would have been a better (and simpler) idea, but willpower is plentiful on good days. Obviously that's a poor risk assessment: of course it's easy to make the annoying-bug-beneficial choice when it doesn't cost much. The actual test is what happens on a very bad day when you're exhausted and worried about other problems. Most people eventually end up caving and "cheating" on their diet, simply because we're terrible at judging risks and overestimate our ability to resist temptation when it isn't actually being tested. The solution to this problem is to have the humility to admit our weaknesses in assessing risks and how easy it can be to overestimate our own abilities. From that point of views, prudence suggests a good idea might be using the benefits available on good days to prepare for the bad days and moments of weakness. Don't allow the temptation into the house so succumbing to temptation isn't possible or involves a much higher cost. Words that promise that you won't fall to temptation are hard to enforce on yourself if the company has as bad quarter/year and finances are tight. Instead of words, the way for as company to distinguish themselves from the mostly-empty promises of the past is to publicly remove your own ability to make the wrong choice. If your hands are tied by a Ulysses Pact[2], it doesn't matter if someone offers to drive a dump truck full of money to your house if you sell out your users[3]: the decision has already been made and you no longer have that power. [1] https://youtu.be/Yth7O6yeZRE?t=18765 https://youtu.be/Yth7O6yeZRE?t=18765 (Doctorow's talk starts at 5:12:45) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o

airstrike 8y ago

D̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶e̶v̶i̶l̶

toomuchtodo 8y ago

"We welcome and will assist in the implementation of regulation and oversight by an independent entity with the authority to sanction us, with penalties up to and including the dissolution of our company and pursuing company officers directly". Very similar to the game theory experiment of having a piece of cake to cut: one person gets to cut, the other person gets to pick the piece they want. You have to handcuff yourself to doing the right thing. Your decisions about "being evil" then become easy; you simply can't pick those paths knowing you've locked in the consequences.

SwellJoe 8y ago

"Make most of your money from something other than advertising." But, that doesn't account for Amazon who have become (or were always?) evil in their own special ways.

0003 8y ago
Even so, https://advertising.amazon.com/ https://advertising.amazon.com/

opportune 8y ago

I think the only way to stay true to a well-meaning mission statement is to not go public, but that’s kind of a non-starter for most VC backed companies. And even if you do stay private for a long time, the death/departure/retirement of the founders would be likely to result in acquisition either by PE/a public company or preempt an IPO

jniedrauer 8y ago
Another option, specifically for tech companies, is to create free products and use support contracts as a revenue generator. Companies that follow this model include Red Hat and Elastic. They've both been tremendously successful while adding a lot of good to the world. The open source community keeps them honest.
SwellJoe 8y ago
I'm not sure I buy that. The idea behind a public company is (in theory) much more democratic than a closely held company, and it used to be that public companies were viewed and regulated that way. But, when the vast majority of shares are held by a few, and when regulatory authority has been decimated, it loses any sense of democratic responsibility. We kinda have the worst of both worlds.

bhauer 8y ago

So much of what concerns me about the modern tech titans is the amount of data they collect and process. So if you were to be at the helm of an up and coming unicorn, the way to differentiate yourself is: 1. Provide your service with the option of collecting nearly zero or precisely zero data about customers if they so choose. In order to do this, it may be necessary to provide your services as open source software they can operate themselves on hosts they own or lease. 2. Adopt a comprehensive privacy-respecting mission statement analogous to the portions of the Mozilla manifesto [1] pertaining to privacy. 3. Provide full transparency about when, how, and in what measure data is collected about users who have not opted out via #1 above. 4. Ensure that your revenue streams are firewalled from user data. Never allow user data to be considered a potential source of revenue. 5. To the extent feasible under the law, provide transparency about revenue and finances. Provide evidence that the business is healthy thanks to voluntary exchange of money from principal users for products or services, and not exchanges that are involuntary for users. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

pdkl95 8y ago

Words on their own are not worth much in the long run. It's easy to pursue well-meaning plans on good days when everything is working like it's supposed to and everywhere you go people seem to be talking about the amazing stuff your "unicorn trajectory" will create. Cory Doctorow had a useful analogy[1]: if you're trying to lose weight, most of the time it isn't very difficult to resist tempting siren's call from the box of cookies in your pantry. Obviously not buying the tempting snack would have been a better (and simpler) idea, but willpower is plentiful on good days. Obviously that's a poor risk assessment: of course it's easy to make the annoying-bug-beneficial choice when it doesn't cost much. The actual test is what happens on a very bad day when you're exhausted and worried about other problems. Most people eventually end up caving and "cheating" on their diet, simply because we're terrible at judging risks and overestimate our ability to resist temptation when it isn't actually being tested. The solution to this problem is to have the humility to admit our weaknesses in assessing risks and how easy it can be to overestimate our own abilities. From that point of views, prudence suggests a good idea might be using the benefits available on good days to prepare for the bad days and moments of weakness. Don't allow the temptation into the house so succumbing to temptation isn't possible or involves a much higher cost. Words that promise that you won't fall to temptation are hard to enforce on yourself if the company has as bad quarter/year and finances are tight. Instead of words, the way for as company to distinguish themselves from the mostly-empty promises of the past is to publicly remove your own ability to make the wrong choice. If your hands are tied by a Ulysses Pact[2], it doesn't matter if someone offers to drive a dump truck full of money to your house if you sell out your users[3]: the decision has already been made and you no longer have that power. [1] https://youtu.be/Yth7O6yeZRE?t=18765 https://youtu.be/Yth7O6yeZRE?t=18765 (Doctorow's talk starts at 5:12:45) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o