Misconceptions about raising investment (feat. design ethics)
-> Note: "design" here doesn't mean styling.
Raising investment is not the college entrance exam.
And even the questions, answers, criteria, value, influence, and appropriateness of the entrance exam itself are endlessly debated -- so what about investment?
Personally, I think "raising investment" is just
1. another form of consumption by investors.
2. What sets it apart from ordinary purchasing is that the price is set by the buyer, not the seller.
3. Another distinctive feature: the purchase doesn't end at purchase; it almost always leads directly into a sale.
Personal musings aside, in tech-company and startup circles there are tons of lectures being held and distributed, and in the process, plenty of star instructors are being produced? -- and their content sells well.
Maybe that's why, in related industry communities, I often spot excessive invocations of ethics, principles, and "model-answer" methodologies.
I think it starts with the college-entrance-exam style education. Those who succeeded through the entrance-exam system -- or rather, those who see themselves as having succeeded -- seem to be recycling their own success-frame in society too.
The result is that even things without right answers end up getting answers pinned on them.
The backdrop that pushed things this way is the natural byproduct of "financial" (finance + tech). Those who succeeded? before -- those who gained influence -- have structured things to keep that influence and make it sustainable.
Since it's not one or two but tens or hundreds of millions of people doing it, I think it has turned into something like a universal standard.
The reason I'm writing up these off-the-cuff thoughts is simply to chat with fellow practitioners (not fellow employees).
There are many new hires -- but often few seniors. They tend to learn from the market. And what leads that market is "financial" (finance + tech), and the owners of that financial are largely companies with a lot of money. In modern terms, the investors.
These folks' investments -- as I said, their consumption, and the sales that follow -- do not operate by the market logic that producers, distributors, sellers, and consumers like us participate in. To put it more precisely, there's no reason they should. Because, in the end, they often are both the seller and the buyer.
Circling back to the main point, with this musing as the backdrop: when I see people benchmark the design guidelines, interfaces, and policies of famous startups -- the ones who got investment through the techniques above -- as if they were right answers, I find it regrettable.
They built their careers, got investment along the way, spoke at events, and sometimes became managers. They then share the know-how (frame) that let them succeed, and some of the new hires or mid-level people who hear that advice reproduce or branch out the frame further.
Coming back to the main point again: today's tech companies are seriously lacking in ethical awareness. Selective criticism has become far too pervasive.
Even on YouTube, some speakers from famous startups have become Daechi-dong-style star instructors, passing on the shortcuts or corner-cuttings of major domestic messengers, famous delivery companies, and the financial-frame of what used to be called "social commerce" and is now a famous fast-delivery commerce, as "principles," "cheat sheets," and "pro tips."
In tech-company and startup practice, the thing emphasized until your ears ring and your mouth goes dry is "users and user experience."
But we need to check whether the needs of "the user (customer)" at the starting point are really those of users (customers) in our own situation, or those of users (the investors) trying to generate returns via our service.
Without a sustained concern for design ethics, we can, without realizing it, directly change the living environment that props up our daily life.
And in many respects this has already happened. Which is why the sort of stories that occasionally make the news, the kind that personally make me fume, seem to be noticeably on the rise.
In the industrial age centered on physical labor... soot kept clogging factory chimneys, the chimneys were small, and by the era's efficiency, common sense, and economic logic, some employers hired small, cheap children to clean them at low cost.
In the information age centered on knowledge labor... to meet goals like existing platform policies and systems, raising investment, or even recouping it, we need to turn around once in a while and ask: is the "efficiency, common sense, economic logic" we take as a given in today's practice really different from the common sense of the past?
Especially for PMs, POs, and product designers.
And before we engage in the practice of so-called "PMF (product-market fit) validation," which is treated as something highly expert and grand, we probably need to verify whether "the market" is really the market we're in, and whether "the product" traded there is really a daily product or service for consumers -- for people like us.
-- so I ramble, sinking into uninvited daydreams, and after splashing around alone in this room of thoughts for a while, I jot a few lines down figuring it's time to step out, in my own little escape-attempt.
