Originally posted on Linkedin. See the conversation there.
I had an epiphany today.
The next 48 years of my life, I want to dedicate myself in reducing wastage in building tech companies.
I will be 52 this year. One of my grandfathers lived over 100 years. If he could, why can’t I? Anyway, 100 isn’t the point.
I founded my first tech company in 2004, which was a total failure. Ever since then, I have either tinkered with tech companies or been helping them.
- There’s wastage in building products.
- There’s wastage in winning customers (sales).
- There’s wastage in building teams.
- And then you waste time trying to raise capital.
- And the majority of what you raise ends up wasted.
And why do companies need to spend 60% of capital raised on paying Google and Facebook for user/customer acquisitions? How the heck did this happen? Or more likely why did the industry allow this to happen?
There are enough problems in all of this, that need solving.
I love tech startups. So why not spend the remaining years of my life trying to fix these problems? I think I was already working on some of the above, but the clarity of what I was doing wasn’t there.
Finally! It only took me 16 years to realise it.