Are you a 100% sure you will be selling the same products or services twenty years from now? I love this Brian Chesky’s quote in a letter written to his Airbnb team “Don’t fuck up the culture”.

“Our culture is the foundation for our company. We may not be remembered for much after we are gone, and if Airbnb is around 100 years from now, surely we won’t be a booking website for homes.”[1]

Investing in startups is not about charity. It is not philanthropy either. It is not about ROI. And for God’s sake it is not about PR or marketing. It is about the future of your business; about staying ahead of the competition.[2]

Don’t ignore small markets or lower margins just because they don’t make sense now. YouTube (sold to Google for US$1.6B), Netflix (Blockbuster did not buy them for US$50M when they could) or Twitch (sold to Amazon for US$900M). They all started small. Now they are bigger and impossible to acquire by Grupo Televisa or similar companies in the region. This happens all the time in different markets.

Innovation is a long-term business plan. Fund some startups. Or acquire them. You will have passionate people working hard to solve a problem with higher motivations than money.

Many companies are already trying. Learn from their mistakes. There’s room to do a whole bunch more. Happy to help. [3]

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Notes

[1] Here’s a link to the letter. Airbnb is perhaps one of the most innovative and successful companies in the last years, however they anticipate they might not be doing the same in 100 years.

[2] I think PR is an evil incentive to support entrepreneurship. It’s not about seeming innovative, it’s about being truly innovative.

[3] Or please read “The Innovators Dilemma” by Clay Christensen or “Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital” by Carlota Pérez.