5 ms·

I feel that it's even simpler: The company is the product. When we have that mindset, we absolutely don't care about the thing that we call "our product." It's

I feel that it's even simpler: The company is the product. When we have that mindset, we absolutely don't care about the thing that we call "our product." It's just food for the actual product, where we want to fatten it up, and sell it to the biggest slaughterhouse. That starts almost immediately. You can't even get an A round, without an "exit plan." I feel that the very existence of an exit plan, dooms the user. No one cares about them. It's all about fattening the company, and making it look good. When we do that, we'll feed it nothing but junk food, in an effort to make it as fat as possible, as quickly as possible, with absolutely no thought as to long-term viability. I would love to see the tech industry return to concentrating on truly delivering good to the end-user. It's still possible to make a decent living, but maybe not at the insane rates we see.

alephnerd 1y ago
> The company is the product. If you've ever dealt with Investor Relations at a public company, this becomes very apparent very quick. Core fundamentals as a business can be strong, but if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis (which does not have to be tangentially related with active initiatives) about your company, you will not succeed. Usually, the onus should fall on PM, EMs, and Sales Leadedship to drive customer outcomes, but the hyperfocus on short term deliverables AT THE EXPENSE of a long term product vision makes it difficult to push back. Very few newly founded or public companies can do the latter - the most recent ones I can think of are maybe Datadog and Wiz (not public but they did drive a customer centric mentality internally). Of course, a lot of this is also due to the extreme bloat that formed in the tech industry in the late 2010s to early 2020s. Teams grew unrealistically large with limited financial justification beyond cherry-picked growth metrics, and this meant a lot of companies lost the ability to innovate frugally or nimbly. Unrealistically high valuations also played a role because towards the end, founders could end up demanding IPO-sized multiples in private markets even without the underlying fundamentals (eg. Lacework's $9 BILLION valuation on what was at most $90 MILLION in revenue). A lot of the current AI products and stories are cost-competitive due to that bloat itself, so some amount of rightsizing will help the industry.
- dehrmann 1y ago
  > if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis...about your company, you will not succeed. Halfway true. There's a famous quote: > In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. At some point, strong fundamentals will catch up with you.
  - generativenoise 1y ago
    In the limit that might be fine, the problem is the amount of damage caused in the meantime and the constraints that puts on future trajectories.
  - sailfast 1y ago
    Only for those left holding the heavy, heavy bag.
  - nradov 1y ago
    In the short run if you can get acquired then the long run fundamentals don't matter. They just become noise in some larger company's financial statements.
    - newswasboring 1y ago
      This is such a boring dytopia. Everything is just a grift at this point.
    - s1artibartfast 1y ago
      They might not matter anymore for you, but they still exist, which is the sentiment the relevant sentiment for the quote.
- api 1y ago
  Isn’t all this company is the product stuff an obvious side effect of wealth inequality? There is way way more money up top looking for investments than there is in the hands of customers, so it’s far more profitable to chase that money and make the stock the product than it is to care about the actual product much. It’s a special case of the more general big dumb money problem that happens whenever too much money ends up in too few hands, whether those hands are a government or a few private rich citizens. You end up with this giant piñata of big dumb money and everyone whacking it. In the old USSR instead of the stock is the product it was the appearance in the eyes of other bureaucrats is the product, but it’s kind of the same phenomenon. The customer isn’t the customer.
whateveracct 1y ago
> I feel that it's even simpler: The company is the product. As Action Jack Barker said, Pied Piper's product is its stock.
klik99 1y ago
"The company is the product." -> When I'm feeling more optimistic I see this is how VC sees their portfolio and how you sell it to them, but not what the company is in reality. Like playwrights who write under authoritarian regimes selling it to the censor as promoting the regime while it actually satirizes and undermines them. But even if it's possible to walk that line, the data just doesn't back it up as common. Side note, on "exit plan" - the most ridiculous thing about raising money is you need an exit strategy but you cannot explicitly say you have an exit strategy, you have to imply it while the whole time pretending it's not a focus for you. It's a very weird dynamic.
- bruce511 1y ago
  It helps to formally understand who is who. Every company has staff, customers, suppliers and product. If you go the VC route then the VC is the customer. Since any good business is focused on customer satisfaction, a VC funded business is focused on VC satisfaction. VCs want an exit. Which necessarily means switching funding model. The only switch that has worked so far is advertising. Advertising requires attention. Of course a business can succeed with say SaaS subscriptions instead of advertising. This works well for B2B, but less so for B2C. Amazon is the poster child for B2C success, but makes most of its money from AWS (which is B2B). The pattern is now well understood, and well demonstrated. If your business is B2C then figure out the funding model. If you can't do that, if you can't do it without VC money, then your path is predestined.
  - iamacyborg 1y ago
    > Amazon is the poster child for B2C success, but makes most of its money from AWS (which is B2B). Amazon still makes the most revenue from ecom.
    - bobnamob 1y ago
      But most of its profit from AWS
    - spwa4 1y ago
      That's what you get when an expert financial trader makes a company. He wanted billions from the start ... so how to do it? There's only one way, really: a pyramid scheme. But an atypical one: get lots of sales, lots of revenue and change any profit into capital. This is quite a common plan in Western Europe, and that's why it doesn't work there. Why would you do that? Well companies are taxed on profit. And the money you pay to investors ... is also paid out of the profit. No profit -> all the money stays in the company, under the control of management, ready to be deployed on yachts and castles for the CEO. Governments get nothing. Investors get nothing. Jeff Bezos (and very early investors) get everything. If they get desperate there is a buyback (no doubt matched by a greater stock package for the top of the company). This is a pyramid scheme because the whole company only works because it only makes extremely minimal profit. If it starts demanding profit it will be eaten alive by competition in no time at all. Money has to be invested in, flows to the top, and is taken out at the top. No doubt Bezos was utterly baffled by the success of it and therefore isn't yet out, but ...
Ekaros 1y ago
When you really think about it, this also applies to very many publicly traded companies. Tech especially, always searching to present next growth area. And then often shortly abandoning it or wasting massive resources on it... Really does make me cynical on investing...
- bgnn 1y ago
  We make fun of the state run businesses of old communist regimes, how wasteful they were, how mismanaged they were, how they produced stuff nobody wanted and so on. I'm increasingly getting a similar feeling for VC fueled tech. It's all smoke and mirrors of hype (was blockchain or web3.0 yesterday, AI and quantum today). There is so much wasted money, especially after quantitative easing and negative interest rates of the past decade.
  - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
    > state run businesses of old communist regimes, how wasteful they were, how mismanaged they were, how they produced stuff nobody wanted I'm increasingly convinced that this is pure western capitalist propaganda. From what I observed in the 8 or so years I've been an adult, Western Capitalist economies (especially US) are much more bloated and wasteful. Nothing demonstrated this more clearly than Crypto/Web3 Hype-Bubble.
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    Publicly traded is no better. Lets not forget whole Meta and Metaverse and VR "investment". Google basically launching entire physical products and then killing them and refunding everyone (Stadia)... One might question would we as society be better off if that money was spend on more efficient factories or say nuclear powerplants?
    - speed_spread 1y ago
      How about public education and healthcare?
  - Jensson 1y ago
MangoToupe 1y ago
> I would love to see the tech industry return to concentrating on truly delivering good to the end-user. I How do you force an industry to ignore profit incentive? Seems a little pollyannish to hope for.
- account42 1y ago
  You force them to pay for the negative externalities they cause so that their profit incentives are not as misaligned with what is good for the rest of the world. This includes making companies pay for pollution but also for much more abstract damages like the reduced consumer choice from monopolies.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    > You force them to pay for the negative externalities they cause Surely Capital would just purchase more convenient terms from politicians.
    - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
      in which case you just have a failed state. Just like Drug lords run Mexico, VC and investors run the US, and citizens suffer in both cases.

alephnerd 1y ago

> The company is the product. If you've ever dealt with Investor Relations at a public company, this becomes very apparent very quick. Core fundamentals as a business can be strong, but if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis (which does not have to be tangentially related with active initiatives) about your company, you will not succeed. Usually, the onus should fall on PM, EMs, and Sales Leadedship to drive customer outcomes, but the hyperfocus on short term deliverables AT THE EXPENSE of a long term product vision makes it difficult to push back. Very few newly founded or public companies can do the latter - the most recent ones I can think of are maybe Datadog and Wiz (not public but they did drive a customer centric mentality internally). Of course, a lot of this is also due to the extreme bloat that formed in the tech industry in the late 2010s to early 2020s. Teams grew unrealistically large with limited financial justification beyond cherry-picked growth metrics, and this meant a lot of companies lost the ability to innovate frugally or nimbly. Unrealistically high valuations also played a role because towards the end, founders could end up demanding IPO-sized multiples in private markets even without the underlying fundamentals (eg. Lacework's $9 BILLION valuation on what was at most $90 MILLION in revenue). A lot of the current AI products and stories are cost-competitive due to that bloat itself, so some amount of rightsizing will help the industry.

dehrmann 1y ago
> if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis...about your company, you will not succeed. Halfway true. There's a famous quote: > In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. At some point, strong fundamentals will catch up with you.
- generativenoise 1y ago
  In the limit that might be fine, the problem is the amount of damage caused in the meantime and the constraints that puts on future trajectories.
- sailfast 1y ago
  Only for those left holding the heavy, heavy bag.
- nradov 1y ago
  In the short run if you can get acquired then the long run fundamentals don't matter. They just become noise in some larger company's financial statements.
  - newswasboring 1y ago
    This is such a boring dytopia. Everything is just a grift at this point.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    They might not matter anymore for you, but they still exist, which is the sentiment the relevant sentiment for the quote.
api 1y ago
Isn’t all this company is the product stuff an obvious side effect of wealth inequality? There is way way more money up top looking for investments than there is in the hands of customers, so it’s far more profitable to chase that money and make the stock the product than it is to care about the actual product much. It’s a special case of the more general big dumb money problem that happens whenever too much money ends up in too few hands, whether those hands are a government or a few private rich citizens. You end up with this giant piñata of big dumb money and everyone whacking it. In the old USSR instead of the stock is the product it was the appearance in the eyes of other bureaucrats is the product, but it’s kind of the same phenomenon. The customer isn’t the customer.

whateveracct 1y ago

> I feel that it's even simpler: The company is the product. As Action Jack Barker said, Pied Piper's product is its stock.

klik99 1y ago

"The company is the product." -> When I'm feeling more optimistic I see this is how VC sees their portfolio and how you sell it to them, but not what the company is in reality. Like playwrights who write under authoritarian regimes selling it to the censor as promoting the regime while it actually satirizes and undermines them. But even if it's possible to walk that line, the data just doesn't back it up as common. Side note, on "exit plan" - the most ridiculous thing about raising money is you need an exit strategy but you cannot explicitly say you have an exit strategy, you have to imply it while the whole time pretending it's not a focus for you. It's a very weird dynamic.

bruce511 1y ago
It helps to formally understand who is who. Every company has staff, customers, suppliers and product. If you go the VC route then the VC is the customer. Since any good business is focused on customer satisfaction, a VC funded business is focused on VC satisfaction. VCs want an exit. Which necessarily means switching funding model. The only switch that has worked so far is advertising. Advertising requires attention. Of course a business can succeed with say SaaS subscriptions instead of advertising. This works well for B2B, but less so for B2C. Amazon is the poster child for B2C success, but makes most of its money from AWS (which is B2B). The pattern is now well understood, and well demonstrated. If your business is B2C then figure out the funding model. If you can't do that, if you can't do it without VC money, then your path is predestined.
- iamacyborg 1y ago
  > Amazon is the poster child for B2C success, but makes most of its money from AWS (which is B2B). Amazon still makes the most revenue from ecom.
  - bobnamob 1y ago
    But most of its profit from AWS
  - spwa4 1y ago
    That's what you get when an expert financial trader makes a company. He wanted billions from the start ... so how to do it? There's only one way, really: a pyramid scheme. But an atypical one: get lots of sales, lots of revenue and change any profit into capital. This is quite a common plan in Western Europe, and that's why it doesn't work there. Why would you do that? Well companies are taxed on profit. And the money you pay to investors ... is also paid out of the profit. No profit -> all the money stays in the company, under the control of management, ready to be deployed on yachts and castles for the CEO. Governments get nothing. Investors get nothing. Jeff Bezos (and very early investors) get everything. If they get desperate there is a buyback (no doubt matched by a greater stock package for the top of the company). This is a pyramid scheme because the whole company only works because it only makes extremely minimal profit. If it starts demanding profit it will be eaten alive by competition in no time at all. Money has to be invested in, flows to the top, and is taken out at the top. No doubt Bezos was utterly baffled by the success of it and therefore isn't yet out, but ...

Ekaros 1y ago

When you really think about it, this also applies to very many publicly traded companies. Tech especially, always searching to present next growth area. And then often shortly abandoning it or wasting massive resources on it... Really does make me cynical on investing...

bgnn 1y ago
We make fun of the state run businesses of old communist regimes, how wasteful they were, how mismanaged they were, how they produced stuff nobody wanted and so on. I'm increasingly getting a similar feeling for VC fueled tech. It's all smoke and mirrors of hype (was blockchain or web3.0 yesterday, AI and quantum today). There is so much wasted money, especially after quantitative easing and negative interest rates of the past decade.
- GreenWatermelon 1y ago
  > state run businesses of old communist regimes, how wasteful they were, how mismanaged they were, how they produced stuff nobody wanted I'm increasingly convinced that this is pure western capitalist propaganda. From what I observed in the 8 or so years I've been an adult, Western Capitalist economies (especially US) are much more bloated and wasteful. Nothing demonstrated this more clearly than Crypto/Web3 Hype-Bubble.
- Ekaros 1y ago
  Publicly traded is no better. Lets not forget whole Meta and Metaverse and VR "investment". Google basically launching entire physical products and then killing them and refunding everyone (Stadia)... One might question would we as society be better off if that money was spend on more efficient factories or say nuclear powerplants?
  - speed_spread 1y ago
    How about public education and healthcare?
- Jensson 1y ago

MangoToupe 1y ago

> I would love to see the tech industry return to concentrating on truly delivering good to the end-user. I How do you force an industry to ignore profit incentive? Seems a little pollyannish to hope for.

account42 1y ago
You force them to pay for the negative externalities they cause so that their profit incentives are not as misaligned with what is good for the rest of the world. This includes making companies pay for pollution but also for much more abstract damages like the reduced consumer choice from monopolies.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  > You force them to pay for the negative externalities they cause Surely Capital would just purchase more convenient terms from politicians.
  - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
    in which case you just have a failed state. Just like Drug lords run Mexico, VC and investors run the US, and citizens suffer in both cases.