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).
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.
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.
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.
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1/ Founders: If you have competing term sheets, what factors are important beyond price? Firm A has a lower valuation BUT a much better track record of realizing that value. Firm B has a history of paying up but fewer exits. Who do you choose? 🧵👇🏾
2/ Startup employees: Similarly, how do you weigh offers from two competing startups? Is there data hiding in plain sight that may help you decide whose equity will be worth more?
3/ Allocators: Whether you are investing in startups directly or indirectly, what tools are you using to sift through the signal and the noise?
New data from @AkiliLabs clinical trial for teens 13-17yo with ADHD show that 2 out of 3 teens had meaningful clinical improvement in attentiveness (using an FDA-cleared test to measure attention deficit) and 1 in 4 teens tested into the normal range. All through a video game
These results are 3X better than Akili's clinical trial results for 8-12yos, which was their original FDA authorization
For decades parents have had limited options to treat kids with ADHD, mostly relying on pills like Adderall and Ritalin (90% of diagnosed kids are prescribed stimulants). Today, ADHD drugs are the #1 prescribed drug and #1 pharmaceutical expense for kids
The two most important drivers of the next decade: the marginal cost of energy AND the marginal cost of compute will both go to zero.
What does this mean?
Take one of the biggest technology leaps of 2023: ChatGPT. It takes 6,000kWh and $100K per day to run ChatGPT, per @tomgoldsteincs, not including the $1B MSFT spent to fund @OpenAI