alt Hacker NewsDo you think that building what the "market wants" (finding traction/gold, and leaning into that) comes at the cost of people (not) making and promoting "things that should exist" (e.g., companies and products/services aligned with ideal visions of the world they want to be in)?
If so, how is the tradeoff justified? (Make money first, then do "ideal" things?)
If not, why not? (Other than that it's unsuccessful strategically/statistically and wasteful, I guess.)
Any elaboration/response on this theme would be appreciated. Thanks!
I'd encourage you to study the story of Tony's Chocolonely. I included a version of that story in chapter 12 of the new book.
Tony's make some of the most delicious chocolate in the world, but their mission is actually to eradicate child slavery in the production of cocoa. I bring this up because before Tony's, it was widely assumed that "the market" didn't care about child exploitation. They just wanted delicious chocolate. Yet Tony's found a way to prove that this was not true.
The more general lesson is that many of the stories we tell ourselves about "what the market wants" are mere fabrications or just-so stories designed to make us feel better about how crappy our alternatives are. Sometimes it just takes a bold entrepreneur to show us that we already collectively are committed to a different set of ideals. We've just never had the opportunity to vote with our wallets to make it happen.