My Co-Founder Was Right: How I Learned the True Meaning of Ambitious Entrepreneurship
Don’t learn it the hard the way
“I need to introspect and reassess what I value,” I journaled.
Was I living up to my own values? Did I even know what my values were? After a day of emotional discussions with my two co-founders for an EdTech startup, I felt pulled apart. Who was I? Who did I want to be?
We wanted to help teenagers crack the what-the-heck-shall-I-do-after-high-school puzzle with industry mentors. Imagine creating a podcast with a journalist or analyzing genomic data with a computational biologist. Curious students with impatient parents were already on our waitlist.
Then, one day, a co-founder asked, “how low can we price this offering?” Shucks. I felt heated. Tense.
Her question went counter to everything I’d learned in the Stanford MBA program, where I was a first-year student. Shouldn’t we instead ask, “how much are customers willing to pay for this?”
Our instructors encouraged us to launch with a premium offering and then expand, the way Tesla started with its high-end Roadster sports car and later built the more affordable Model 3. At the time, this seemed like a sound strategy in service of a bigger mission.
“Could we offer scholarships?” I asked. “We can make money from wealthy parents and sponsor families who have less?” I knew that we’d have unforeseen costs and that it could be hard to raise prices later. Besides, weren’t scholarships the norm among EdTech startups? But she already knew all this. I missed her point.
“I want equity by design,” my co-founder said.
“We need to start there. And of course, we need to be financially sustainable. I just want us to start with the highest of ambitions. Then charge not more than necessary.” Middle-class families should afford our service without the exclusionary experience of applying for need-based scholarships.
We had started out wanting to help students in need — students who didn’t already have diverse role models, who didn’t have school clubs ranging from crochet to Model United Nations, and who didn’t have money for private counseling.
Yet, there I was, advocating for serving wealthy parents and their teens. “If we solve problems for the wealthy, we’ll also solve problems for those who have less,” I said. Some trickle-down startup gibberish.
My co-founder, however, knew that money speaks: A company prioritizing whoever pays would never make the difference we sought. Having worked as a product manager before coming to Stanford, I could foresee us doing user interviews and prototype testing with the wealthy students and not with the subsidized students. I knew we couldn’t assume that a product built for one user group would be the right product for another user group.
I was confused. Angry and annoyed with her. She was too reasonable so I couldn’t even blame her. I felt angry because I didn’t want to be wrong. Annoyance was a temporary shield for the self-questioning to come. Taking her point to heart would unravel thoughts I didn’t know if I wanted to explore. She confronted me with the disconnect between my intention of positive impact and my actions of profit maximization.
My existing insecurities surfaced. I previously lacked a sense of purpose as a consultant at McKinsey and as a product manager at a tech scale-up. I had claimed to value making a positive difference and couldn’t reconcile my work with those values.
I had come back to school so that I could get my actions and intentions lined up. To do something meaningful for the world. Was I about to down-prioritize the mission yet again, repeating the same mistake?
I wanted the venture to succeed in the traditional business sense. I wanted us to raise funding. I wanted to be a person who founded a company that raised money and became profitable. Both for the money and for the status I associated with founding a company.
I glanced at my co-founder. Was she right? Could we stay together as co-founders?
I sought support from a friend while hiking through a meadow. “What drew you to education?” she asked. “Reducing inequity,” I said. My gut squinched with hypocrisy. Offering educational services to the wealthy exacerbates inequity.
That same night I stayed over at my college roommate’s place. I explained how I didn’t know if my co-founder’s goals were feasible. How going the high road felt so damn difficult. Wasn’t starting a business hard enough in itself?
“You know… What if 10 years from now, your startup is a case taught in business schools?” she asked. “ ‘People used to naively optimize profits, which reinforced an unjust status quo,’ the Professor would say. Then came your startup and showed how business could be done differently.”
I feel embarrassed writing this, expecting eye rolls. Companies have shown different ways of operating already, duh. Think Patagonia. Guild Education.
Yet, her comments can remind all of us to think big. Many a Stanford MBA student prides herself on her high ambitions. What’s more ambitious than founding a company which puts a social mission ahead of all else? And what is more successful: Founding a company that reinforces an unjust status quo or founding a company that serves those in need?
We need not compromise our values just because the alternative feels like summiting Mount Everest. On the contrary: Some acts are important precisely because they’re hard. And human ingenuity thrives when we do what’s hard.
Centering a social mission and then business feasibility is a concept that I continue to wrestle with. I second-guess myself each time I consider careers after school, or even pick classes for the next quarter.
At these times, I look back to the end of my April 9th, 2022 journal entry:
“Business is a means to an end, not the end itself. This is a new frame of mind for me. At the same time, how wonderful to work on a mission that’s unequivocally right.”
Editor: Teresa Chen
