I want to start a company where the main focus is not a relentless march to make more money. We here this quote all the time “we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders to maximize value”. Some form of that sentence is spoken on just about every quarterly earnings call.
I want to start a company where the focus is on using the money that we make to benefit the largest amount of people that we can. We are going to do this through the products that we build, as well as through the causes that we donate excess money too.
The first product we will build is a platform that allows humans to interface with each other, and where the focus of the business is not the never ending march for more profits. The company will also not be structured so that the lions share of the money ends up being handed out to a small group of board member’s or early employees. No one at the company will ever generate a massive pay day because we will run the company too efficiently, spreading the benefit of the platform to as many people as we can.
The first product we are going to make is a platform that will allow restaurants to interface with their customers more easily and effectively. We are going to take a micro transaction from each order placed on the platform, which will allow the restaurants to have an amazing system because the cost of building and maintaining the platform will be spread out over millions of people (restaurant customers). Restaurants would not be able to afford this system on their own, which causes them to loose out on sales in this post covid word to big chains that can afford excellent apps, and to big silicon vally startups who’s sole goal is to “maximize shareholder value”.
We don’t have to be the first company in the space (were not). We don’t have to have the best technology in the short term. We just have to set out with a lazer focus not on “maximizing shareholder value” but “maximizing value for our systems users and for restaurant owners/staff”. No other company is going to take this approach, and build a tool while not trying to make billions of dollars that we can hoard to ourselves. We are going to make the best possible platform, were going to pay every employee well – including the founders, but everyone including the founders will simply have a very solid salary – ownership and board members will not be making millions per year off this system. We will probably come up with some kind of formula or cap on management salary (current thought is management only gets paid a multiple of employee salaries, like management only gets paid 5x the average salary of all employees). So if all employees on average make 100k, then management would be eligible to make 500k). Not set on the structure of the payment plan but the right setup will show itself as we get this company in motion.
So to summarize; were going to build a platform where restaurants can offer take out and delivery to customers through their own apps. There will also be a central marketplace for consumers to use where they can order from any local restaurant near them. This platform is going to take a micro transaction from each order, making the platform free for restaurants. We will build and maintain their individual apps, including making special one off features for them on their own apps. The restaurants will own their customer list. We will not sell ads on our platform. We will not allow coupons codes on the main central parent app. The company will only generate $ from one source, a micro transaction on each customer order.
After we get this train rolling down the tracks – we are going to attempt to move payments into the blockchain (there will be a separate post outlining the details of this in the future).