They aren’t. They are making a lot of money which is what the business was made for.
The post is actually refreshingly honest that keybase is now abandoned and will probably die at some point.
The idea that companies were stupid enough to place their internal identity on some random 3rd party is so incredibly stupid that it’s hard to feel too bad for anyone.
Thank you. Keybase had investors and I’m sure the premium Zoom offered was unbeatable. Zoom can effectively pay infinity with equity. Those investors knew that this was the best way they’d ever have to realize gains. That’s why they invested in the first place.
Well, when FB bought WhatsApp, its founders stayed on for a bit to vest his shares then founded Signal with his "screw you" money. Maybe some of Keybase's founders can do the same thing.
> They are making a lot of money which is what the business was made for.
I miss the days when businesses existed not just to serve investors but also their employees and the common good. It's like a 1%-er meta profit model where the actual business is in buying and selling the business and the core business is really just a temporary front that is designed to never make a profit, just create fancy looking charts and eventually bait and switch consumers when it is sold to the highest bidder and the employees all eventually lose their jobs.
One day, VC funding will either be illegal or required. considering the flow of money in this exchange, I'm betting on the second.
> I miss the days when businesses existed not just to serve investors but also their employees and the common good
Uh when was this? For-profit businesses have always been created for the primary purpose of making money. Any side effect like employee well being happened to coincide with what maximized profits at the time or due to regulation.
Pre-1970 or so. Before Milton Friedman, there was a general sense that companies existed to fulfill some mission, with profit as a means. The CEO of Kellogg commented on this in an interview ca. 1980, that money for a business is like a gasoline for a road trip. You need it to get where you're going, but the point of a road trip is not to accumulate as much gasoline as possible.
Is this a joke? The bulk of the labor movement happened before 1970, and it was not because workers were so well-treated and well-compensated that they had a lot of free time on their hands.
I'm a big fan of business and entrepreneurship, but let's be clear here: there is a reason we invented government. There was never a time when we could 100% count on the beneficence of business leaders to advance social goals.
Edit to add: I'm not trying to demonize all business leaders here. There are some bad actors, but even business leaders who desire to do well have to succeed in the marketplace--even against bad actors. Unfortunately, doing bad things in business often confers the benefit of lowering costs, which is a competitive advantage. This is a known structural issue with a marketplace economy and why we need more than just business to have a good society.
Of course, there have always been bad businesses. The difference between pre-1970 and now, is that we've not only socially legitimized the maximization of profit, we've also all but legally mandated it. Now even "decent" business leaders like the CEO of Costco have to continually answer to their shareholders as to why they're not lowering wages and reducing benefit--and in Costco's case, the shareholders may try to take legal action to force them to lower costs, even though Costco the business is already quite profitable. Due to lack of labor regulation and the mantra that "business are required to maximize shareholder value", Costco's decency is fully dependent on its CEO's (unusual) fortitude to fend off those shareholder demands. When its leadership changes, its ability to care for its employees will likely revert to the mean, which as we see in today's environment is abysmal.
So really, it's not that "there are some bad actors", but that "the system strongly encourages businesses to install these so-called bad actors as their leaders". I agree with you, that we need strong government labor regulations to counter this mentality, but this mentality is why these regulations have deteriorated over the past 50 years.
> The difference between pre-1970 and now, is that we've not only socially legitimized the maximization of profit, we've also all but legally mandated it.
I'm sorry, but this is just not true. If it was legally mandated, then the Costco CEO would not have been able to resist such shareholder demands. Your example proves the opposite of what you think it does.
Nothing has changed in the legal structure of corporate governance since 1970. Do you think that investors never demanded greater returns from business leaders prior to 1970?
They can still demand all they want, but the law remains clear today that corporate directors and managers have the power to run the business as they see fit, and shareholders' sole remedy for their disappointment, in the absence of outright fraud or gross negligence, is to sell their stock.
In February 2014, Tim Cook was the CEO of one of the most valuable companies in the world. At Apple's shareholder meeting, he directly told his shareholders that he does not even consider ROI in some of his decisions. Legal consequences to Apple and Tim Cook for this statement? Zero. He's still CEO. Because there is no legal mandate to maximize corporate profits.
Honestly, by buying into this myth that the law changed in the 1970s, you're lending power to a fake idea that you seem to be opposed to. There is a group of people who wish such a mandate existed, and by acting like they're right, you're kind of helping them.
Business leaders might make anti-social decisions because they feel competitive pressure to succeed in a marketplace where customers are free to choose and are price-sensitive. That's not nearly the same thing as saying that corporate governance law forces them to make such decisions. It doesn't.
I know, that's what I'm trying to say: it's not true that CEOs are "almost but not quite" legally mandated to maximize profit or shareholder value. The law says plainly that they are not.
"All but" is handy phrasing if you're trying to create the impression that something you prefer is true. If you don't prefer it, I think that using that phrase is like shooting yourself in the foot rhetorically.
I think it's more constructive to point out that such a mandate does not exist (regardless of what some shareholders seem to believe), and there are good reasons it doesn't.
Need to keep in mind we now remember this endeavor as ethically challenged, but was it literally 100% for money or did want of these goods play a role:
> was it literally 100% for money or did want of these goods play a role:
> cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium. Surely access to those provides some benefit other than making money, which it also did for them.
This is an utterly meaningless distinction. Money is fungible with all of those goods.
I am not sure you are using fungibility completely correctly because the goods have a condition, are perishable, they can be bartered or traded or maybe are fungible with respect to each other but are not literal money and literally interchangeable with money.
Anyway, if you want to go down that path you can easily conclude that literally any good or activity is just money, that you live a money-dominated life and we all exist for money all the time and while useful in some contexts I don't think it's particularly apt, but I hope you enjoy it.
In the grand context of life, no (despite the vast majority of large scale events that we learn about in history being usually a result of conflict over money/power) , but in the context of business, as this thread is, yes in a for-profit business literally every good and activity is about money.
Some businesses may choose to sacrifice money for things like employee well-being or community contribution, but that's a choice they make, or more likely are forced to make.
Yes, that's exactly the point...it's meaningless to say (as you did) that the EIC wasn't motivated by money but instead motivated by goods. Even leaving aside that they sold those goods for money....the distinction is meaningless, as money is just a store of value and lubricant for the exchange of goods (and services).
It's not a meaningless distinction. The goods are consumable. The British public didn't want access to spices as an investment vehicle. Using them was a quality of life improvement.
No, when businesses were owned primarily by single individuals, their priorities were much more aligned with the goals of a single individual. The owners cared not only about profits but respect in the community, influence over politics, etc. and made choices that today’s publicly traded companies would and do not.
> The owners cared not only about profits but respect in the community
I think you need to read a little more history. People haven't changed their core nature in the past 40 years. Look at Carpetbaggers, the Triangle Shirtwaist company, and William Hearst for relatively recent examples. Further back you can look at The Dutch East India Company, the Knights Templar, and the various and sundry monopolies that have arisen throughout history.
People are driven to acquire capital initially to meet their own needs, then for power. There always have been people and groups of people who strive for the latter, not being satisfied with the former. Romanticizing long dead business owners may play well in movies and books, but it isn't reflective of human nature.
I miss the days when businesses existed not just to support free users but also their revenue model and profits. It's like the 0%-er meta profit model where the actual business is in building and marketing the userbase and the core business is really just a temporary front that is designed to never make a profit, just create fancy MAU charts and eventually bait and switch free users when it is sold to the highest bidder and the free users all eventually lose their service.
One day, revenue models will either be illegal or required. Considering the outflow of users in this exchange, I'm betting on the second.
Software exists for its users business exist for its owners more precisely its stakeholder, further divide stakeholders into the various rights, control, claims on cash flow, claims on assets, give users the first then watch what happens.
I think you have a rose-tinted view of what old-timey businesses looked like. We moved past mom-and-pop subsistence industry like 400 years ago. No one ever said “I’m going to create a sheet metal production company for the common good.”
No you’re confused. He’s asking for a history in which there is no company motivated by anything other than profit. Since there exist many companies motivated by things other than profit, no such history can be provided. Hence the GP is wrong. Hence the irrelevance of downvotes on this cunty website
Unless I imagined it, they previously said publicly that they were unlikely to pursue a sell like this because they had succeeded at previous companies and cared more about the impact this product could make than the profit they could make from selling it. I based my decision to agree to the terms of Keybase around this statement which I can conveniently no longer find. I suspect it was in one of their airdrop announcements, and conveniently those links don't work in the Wayback Machine.
"Yes, we sold our previous 2 businesses. But I want to point out that (1) neither of those sales ever hurt (and arguably both sales greatly helped) our users, (2) Keybase deserves special consideration which we are aware of, and (3) both Max and I are happy in a world where we never try to sell a company again, and only build things we like."
I feel silly for falling for it too. Even very wealthy people enjoy extra money.
The post is actually refreshingly honest that keybase is now abandoned and will probably die at some point.
The idea that companies were stupid enough to place their internal identity on some random 3rd party is so incredibly stupid that it’s hard to feel too bad for anyone.
Congrats Keybase!