I’ve been thinking about enshitification recently, and I’m also working on a startup with a friend that just received funding. I’ve been wondering how one might arrange a business such that it won’t gradually trend towards shittier products in search of higher profit margins.
Obviously, it would be nice to redesign all of society so that this isn’t a thing, but barring that, does anyone have any ideas for setting up a business in such a way that motivations are aligned with producing a good product?
Currently, we’re trying to retain as much control as possible, but at some point we may go public, and if we do, I’m not sure how to keep us aimed at accomplishing our goals. We’re building a platform that should solve or at least improve the replication crisis in scientific research, and we could lose control to investors that want board seats, or sell to someone like Google.
If we do either, I doubt the company will do what we want it to do in the long term.
Going public is the route that seems less likely to lead to this change in direction, but it seems like it could end in the same place over a long enough timeline.
The only company I can think of off the top of my head that hasn’t had this issue is valve. Like they obviously aren’t perfect, but they are consistent and don’t cash in user trust for short term profit. I can’t help but see the fact that they never went public and don’t have some kind of weird money fetishist at the helm as key to that.