You don’t have to succeed to create change in the world
Robinhood is a great example of this, whether or not you love the platform, or think it will survive the test of time. Yes, the platform has many issues, but regardless, it has quickly and effectively disrupted the financial industry. Robinhood “blew up” over the idea that they wouldn’t charge you commission fees for trades, and they gave you a free stock just for signing up. Previously you had to pay a minimum of $5 (closer to $10 on many platforms) every time you wanted to buy or sell stock. That meant your minimum required gain per trade to make a profit was between $10-20, making life difficult for most smaller accounts. This consumer-forward practice got popular so fast that it caused the major players in the field to adopt similar practices, simply because they were losing their market share to the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new guy on the block.
You can create more change, faster by building on/working for a competitor to the industry you’re trying to influence, than you ever could by advocating and lobbying to change the current system.
The truth of it is that, rallies and a small amount of bad press only do so much. Part of this is because of the old adage that “any press is good press.” At the end of the day, unless you are affecting a major company’s bottom line and influencing their reports to shareholders, you aren’t materially doing anything.
This creates a weird subset of future companies that I think will only focus on generating enough money to cover expenses and use their ultra-low margins and quickly growing popularity to force large corporations to make consumer-based decisions rather than strictly profits-based. Activism by actually taking action and not just screaming into the Twitter void.
With this mindset, the structure of a company becomes totally different. In general, products and companies are formed to generate money for the people at the top. But, when you are only in it to create change, you don’t have to worry about that and can leverage a whole different set of untraditional growth methods.
Worst case: the major corps call your bluff and won’t change, in which case you keep your business rolling, keep the ultra-low margins, and grow revenue off non-obtrusive ads, retire at a cool 35-50 years old, and focus on other ventures to put those old stingy losers out of business. You still made change, your product is still on the market doing exactly what you wanted in the world, but now you have extra money to devote towards more projects.
Best case: your company forces that change you wanted and you are now renowned as the CEO of the company that revolutionized the industry. You take this newfound corporate celebrity status and leverage it to get cushy jobs as an consultant to other companies trying to do the same thing in other industries, as your influence and good in the world now grows exponentially.
-Matt