Short term profit seeking is a cancer upon us all, is there no way out of this hell?
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Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
John told me that the board of directors had drawn up monthly sales goals for him. Starting in August, he would be expected to hit his quota. I thought this was insane. Once a product exists and is stable, then a company can draw up a sales schedule. How can one reasonably do that when the product does not even exist yet? Especially if the product is a cutting-edge technology which carries a lot of unknowns? For a stable company with an existing product, deadlines need to be more than mere aspirational goals, but when building truly original technology, then the entire company is aspirational — until the technology is working, there is no proof that the technology can work.
Even if the glorious day arrived when we would finally have an app customers could install on their iPhones, that would only be the beginning of a long process. Customers are an endless surprise. I’ve worked with startups for sixteen years; I know this well. Whenever I have shown people new software, the features that seemed intuitive to me were counterintuitive to them. Real-life needs that seemed intuitive to them seemed strange to me. If John thought that we could create our apps and have them working by mid-August, and he could immediately go out and start making tons of money, then he was sadly mistaken. If the board of directors thought that, then they were being badly misled.
https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...
Take your firm private with investors that are focused on long term goals, not short term profits.
Why bother with public markets if private markets provide sufficient capital to execute?
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-09/how-elon-...
The stock market doesn't require short-term thinking. But it does create a default focus on short-term performance when leadership does not articulate a plan.