Wealth is something rarely talked about amongst community builders. It's taboo. But there's an opportunity to have a more nuanced conversation about the intersection of business and belonging. Are capital and community at their best when they drive each other?
Adding some sort of kickstarter functionality to this would be really interesting. Or making it possible to earn ownership points by investing money, though I imagine that might alter the purity of the community dynamic. Excited to see how it all comes together either way.
It was definitely broad and sure doesn't cover the entire spectrum of companies. I do believe that it include a whole lot of startups today though, and I hope that this helps them think about how to better set themselves up to succeed.
"Some business models are "get as many users as possible, get acquired, and live as a loss leader for a larger organization" and that's perfectly fine."
Yea that's a good point...though one could argue that they're still selling a product, the insurance. But yea this model may require a different approach.
I'm trying to respond to the content of your post. If it's such common sense then it should be easy to come up with examples. I'd argue that there isn't much in between. Either you're building a company that has to sell a product or you're building a high growth monetize later company. This post is addressing the former option.
"Like, getting situated, getting everything working, working out the kinks, evaluating possible monetization models, etc. etc."
What does getting situated mean? Working out what kinks? People aren't paying for your product they're paying for what they believe your product to be. Kinks don't matter.
"Uhh, no. A lot of companies can work on this model. And do so. The examples are numerous."
Lets hear them.
"And, what is it with this condescending style of writing? If the content of the article wasn't full of reductive, hand-wavy half-baked ideas, the arrogance in that entire piece would be forgivable. But that's not the situation it looks like."