Fake tales of entrepreneurship, and tales of businesses devoid of sacredness.

About entrepreneurs exiting “on purpose“, inorganic business growth, and more.

Images from Unsplash

April 15, 2024—Zurich, Switzerland

Entrepreneurs are the life force that brings life to land, resources, people and capital to produce something worthy of our money and affection:

what we eat and drink,
everything we wear,
how we play and get rest,
how we learn and get informed,
how we work and contribute,
how we heal, and how we sleep,
—all of that is coming through
the hands of entrepreneurs.

They have always been at the forefront of society—thinking differently, seeing further, acting bolder, and bringing change and prosperity. They have also always been risk-takers. When it comes to entrepreneurs in the 21st century, however, the data is becoming troublesome:

More than 9 out of 10 founders will fail
3 out of 4 will report mental health issues

So, what’s up with some of the boldest and most courageous people?

Fake Tales of Success

In the last 20 years, the majority of start-ups have been involving technology and consequently some form of disruption. Along that, comes the potential opportunity to be “the next big thing”. The stories of entrepreneurs who made billions over the last years circulate the Internet; many study their stories, and dream to achieve the same.

And yes, we’ve all heard the stories of success of big tech companies. Yet, very few of us go through the trouble of learning how exactly did these companies get so big and who supported their journey.

The prevalent narratives revolve around purpose-driven individuals with strong values, exceptional talent, and relentless dedication, emerging from humble beginnings (usually involving a garage) to achieve a global success. In reality, things are a bit different.

Behind the great success of the biggest tech companies is an additional story. Most big tech are seed-funded from the beginning or a bit later by someone big. Starting with large private funds and finishing with institutions like the NSA and CIA (just to name a few) — they all have supported a long list of tech companies.

My intent is not to investigate the sources of capital and spheres of influence— I am focusing on the fake tales and their consequences… Once start-up founders get sucked into the fake tales of success, everyone supports them to dream big, be courageous, purpose-driven and push hard forward. The whole start-up scene (incubators, accelerators, start'-up funds, angel investors, grants, venture capital, coaches, mentors, and so on) is geared towards finding the next big entrepreneur. Plenty of resources and practitioners are dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs in attaining the necessary competences and tapping into the right resources. Everyone entrepreneurs meet, claims to know the key to their success. Consequently, they buy into the belief that if they follow what they are told and do everything right, if they work really hard and keep standing up after they fail, at the end, they will for sure succeed big time.

The truth is that you can do everything right, and still not succeed.

Fake Tales of Purpose

Young entrepreneurs are taught today the importance of building businesses that make a positive impact on society while still generating sustainable returns. It’s referred as the triple bottom line- purpose, profit, planet and later the 4Ps- purpose, profit, planet and people. There are even further development of these with purpose always being present under some form.

1 | Being purpose-driven isn’t new

The world is full of people thinking that being purpose-driven is new, but there is nothing new in that. We’re reinventing the hot water here.

Entrepreneurs have always been purpose driven.

If you have been around the block prior to the digital age and before globalization, you may remember that small traditional entrepreneurs had a deep respect for their products, deep relationships with their customers, and the community they are in, as well as deep respect for Nature along with strong family values. Yes, there have been exclusions to that but I think that they were exactly that— the exclusion, rather than the rule— and I will talk about them towards the end.

For a traditional entrepreneur, work has always been spiritual— an expression of who they are, an integral part of their soul’s journey, the unique way in which they would contribute and create their legacy.

It used to be very different, and sometimes it still is. I recently visited a “slow” fast-food place. The owner prepared me the food, talked with me about life and some common themes, and finally, as he was handing me the food to take away, he put his hand on his heart and bowed to me while saying thank you. I will never forget how I felt. Even today, when I remember it, I feel goose bumps and my heart starts beating.

Experiences such as this one almost make me cry when I compare the experience of buying and eating food made with love with the experience of buying and eating industrially produced and sold food.

Traditional entrepreneurs did not need to be reminded of the triple bottom line and stakeholder models. They also did not need to have a CSR department. The traditional mindset of an entrepreneur has always been on their long-term financial success, return customers and reputation. They have often been known to run successful businesses for generations with pride, and to contribute to their communities.

Traditional entrepreneurs invested their heart and soul into their business.

2 | Make it big—then do what you like (i.e. then follow your purpose)

Talk to most young (tech) entrepreneurs and they will tell you that they are ready to work really hard, make it big, and then retire early so that they can do what they really like. As a rule, what they really like, pictures something heart-warming and beautiful. “Make it big—then do what you like”, on the other side, is what I call a soul-crushing reality because it implies that you will work only for the money so that afterwards you do what your soul desires.

On the other side, let’s see also how the tales go if you want to make it big. The dominant rhetoric is that you need to be purpose-driven to make it big. You need to reach to a place deep inside so that you can bring the best out of you and also so that you touch the lives of people in a profound way. I actually agree with that. The best businesses run exactly like that— and I would call that a soul-nurturing reality. However, that’s not how the story goes.

3 | Exiting “on purpose”

Once entrepreneurs reach to that place deep inside, work really hard forgetting health, friends and family, once they make it really big, the story goes that they have to sell to venture capitalists or “to exit”. For those who are not part of that landscape, exit means building the business until it reaches certain financial goals and market penetration; then you attract the big funds to scale it and/or sell it to a corporation.

Maybe you would ask, what’s wrong with that? A couple of things…

• If you indeed connect to your soul’s purpose, you will be soul-crushed to exit on it and see your “baby” being run with profit maximization targets alone.

• If you don’t connect to your soul’s purpose, you will be soul-crushed to do it in the first place, and chances are, you will not do it well.

Either way, you are soul-crushed. If you wonder what I mean by soul-crushed, I consider the majority of mental illnesses, including addictions, to be related to working and living lives disconnected from our heart and soul.

That’s also what happens with many people working jobs they do not like, and not following their dreams because they do not believe they would be able to support themselves. But that is a whole other article.

Fake Tales of Risk & Reward

Exiting is something that happens to the “lucky” few. According to statistics, more than 90% of entrepreneurs will fail and if we include really everyone who attempts to start a business, this number will be much much higher.

What’s wrong with that, you might ask? Entrepreneurship is by definition about risk and the textbook rule is that the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. And indeed, most start-ups understand that, and they think that they are ready for it. What they, and Society as a whole, do not understand is that the odds of making it have never been lower in the whole history of humanity, and the risks have never been higher.

In such tough market and economic conditions, you may assume that the biggest rewards will go to those who take the biggest risk. You would be wrong.

The reality is that small entrepreneurs are taking 99.99% of the risk on their shoulders. Most of them would fail with huge consequences for them and their families. Corporations and venture capital would on the other side take a very measured risk. They would buy the already successful start-up based on an appraisal of future revenues and profitability.

However, no evaluation ever includes all the risk and negative externalities on Society associated with the early stages of business start-ups, and they are enormous. They include both financial consequences and mental illnesses, both of which have further and far reaching negative consequences on Society.

Why Should You Care?

Maybe you don’t care about any of these negative externalities on entrepreneurs and Society at large, and all you are concerned with is the quality of your life and wellbeing. I get that. At the end, that’s what we all care most about.

The problem is, whether something we consume contributes to our wellbeing depends on who does it and with what purpose— sacred or not.

As I have described, the whole small entrepreneurs scene is geared towards selling to big capital at the end. On the other hand, the whole scene of the transnational corporations is also geared towards mergers and acquisitions. The speed of disruptions driven by technological development, and the need for business growth driven by the speed of globalization, pushes both the smallest and the biggest firms towards inorganic growth. If you are not familiar with the term, “inorganic growth” arises from mergers or takeovers rather than an increase in the company's own business activity.

So even if we are to assume that somewhere in the beginning a business was driven by a purpose, somewhere down the road, for one or another reason, it will be ripped off of their original purpose (unless it remains really small).

Inorganic growth produces “inorganic products“

Long story short, we are stuck with the products of “inorganically grown” businesses ripped off of their initial purpose, and just as inorganic agricultural food, they are ripped off of their nutritional value and sacredness. They pretend to be meeting our “nutritional“ needs when we consume them, but they are not.

However, due to their economies of scale and market strength, we perceive them to be offering greater value for money than the organic products. We do that because either we don’t have the resources to dig deeper, or we don’t want to know. It’s easier to buy into what we are fed with, and we are fed with beautiful statements like these:

• BlackRock’s purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being.

• Pfizer's purpose- “We're in relentless pursuit of breakthroughs that change patients' lives. We innovate every day to make the world a healthier place.”

• Nestlé’s purpose is to unlock the power of food to enhance quality of life for everyone, today and for generations to come.

• Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

I don’t know about you but I am a sucker for beautiful statements like that. I love distilling something huge into a few beautiful words flowing well together, but that’s not why I am writing about it. I am writing about this.

My call is that we wake to the make up of the business world today which transfers unfairly too much of the risk to small entrepreneurs, and is dominated by inorganically grown companies ripped off out of their original purposes and driven by only one purpose.

That purpose is called profit maximization.

Everything else is in service to that, including the above statements.

That’s how we have designed our business world. We have designed most companies to have a separate legal identity with the purpose of profit maximization. That again is a textbook truth but for some reason we conveniently forget it.

Let me say this again.

Public limited companies, i.e. most large-scale companies and investment funds, are separate legal persons brought to life by the human species with the sole purpose of profit maximization, and they are doing a superb job at it.

However, that purpose —when separated from everything else— is in disregard to the sacredness of life. That’s actually how cancer cells function.

We have the exclusion of some of the small entities— if they are run with other objectives — but that’s a very minor part of our lives today.

Hence, most of what we eat and drink, what we wear, how we play-rest, where we learn and get informed, how we rest and heal, is offered to us with the purpose of profit maximization in a way that is devoid of sacredness. I leave to your imagination what that means.

I will only add that this is not happening because some evil people are driven by greed— a common belief among some people. It is happening because we as a society keep “giving birth” to legal persons devoid of sacredness and as a result they produce “inorganic“—sometimes even “toxic“—products.

As a Society, it makes us feel good to expect them to think of the triple bottom line and to follow stakeholder and sustainable models, and have CSR programs. Yet, that would always be in service to profit maximization, and that’s something that is written in every business textbook if we are willing to read it.

By expecting large public limited companies to think of anything else than profit maximization, we ask them to do window dressing and green washing so that we feel better, and they feel better. Whatever they do will always be fake to a smaller or bigger extent and in service to profit maximization unless we change how we as human species bring to life other (legal) species.

As for the brightest and boldest who enter the scene of entrepreneurship, it’s time to recreate the model so that they do not take on their shoulders the better part of the risk, and so that selling off their “baby“ is not their only choice.

As for me, I am dreaming of organic businesses producing organic products nourishing my needs just as that small slow fast-food place did.

If you like this article, I invite you also to read my articles “Technofeudalism, Enshittification, and You...”, and “When we fear AI, who are we really afraid of?” For me, they describe relevant and related aspects of our world today.