Running a business is hard. (Chamath Notes: 001)
- Running a company in 2020 is hard. It’s no longer just about employees and shareholders. It’s now also about stakeholders of which there are many:
Regulators, employees, partners, existing users
But the most important, imo, are mass market potential new users (MMPNU).
2. MMPNUs are critical because they are the only way of achieving a massive outcome. You can build a very good/big company without MMPNUs, but not necessarily world-changing.
If you want to maximize MMPNU demand, you need to understand their psychology.
3. MMPNUs are not picking features and functionality — that’s what early adopters do.
MMPNUs are initially triggered by virality but their choices are cemented by a sensation that the product is aligned with who they are.
When it is, they adopt. When it’s not, they churn.
4. My suspicions is that value-maximizing CEOs of the future will focus on stakeholder issues because, unemotionally, it’s the best way to maximize MMPNUs even when doing so privately drives them crazy.
You didn’t have to do this in the past, but building from today is different.
You can be successful if you don’t take this stakeholder focused path, but I don’t think it is the value-maximizing path which then probably causes more of the best employees to churn.
The fight for MMNPUs will make stakeholder focus a necessary strategic element going fwd.
