Golden Oldies: If The Shoe Fits: Founders and Fools
by Miki Saxon
Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Last week’s look at the “new” Microsoft reminded me of a previous post that’s especially apropos in light of unicorn valuations crashing headlong into the reality of investor focus on profitability.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.
Neither market cap nor valuation are cause for celebration.
Both are as ephemeral as morning fog.
Ask Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella his reaction when Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world for a few months last fall.
“I’m not one of those guys who says, ‘let’s celebrate some market cap measure.’ That’s just not stable.”
What does interest him?
The Microsoft-generated ecosystem.
“Our business model is about creating more surplus outside us. We will only be long-term success when the people are making more money around us,” he said.
This dovetails with what Bill Gates also believes, i.e., a company’s success is defined when the total value of the ecosystem around it is more valuable than the company that created it.
That ecosystem seems non-existent to the majority of founders of gig economy businesses, dating apps, social media, etc.
Or perhaps it’s just those with venture funding who are focused on growth at all costs.
That said, this post is dedicated to the founders who focus on building sustainable businesses/ecosystems.
As opposed to the fools who chase investment in lieu of revenue, celebrate valuation based on their last round of funding, and don’t care about ecosystem beyond its PR value.
Image credit: HikingArtist
