On God, The Spirit of the Market and Entrepreneurship Hell

One of my most redeeming attributes as a person is my ability to take feedback – this is true, regardless of how harsh it is, I prefer to be plainly told that “what you did makes absolutely no sense”, than for negative feedback to be sugarcoated (or worse still – withheld) to avoid hurting my feelings. The philosophy behind this is pretty straightforward – most decisions in life have an inelastic component to them – you keep doing stupid things and nothing happens until one day all your transgressions compound and you’re in a pit so deep you can’t dig yourself out. To avoid precarious situations of this nature, I prefer to be told the truth so I can adjust effectively, and avoid irredeemable mistakes. You are not kind to me by being nice.

My second most redeeming attribute is my ability to ignore feedback. Everyone’s opinion doesn’t matter, and all counsel (as far as I’m concerned) is context-oriented. Regardless of how smart and knowledgeable they are, swallowing everyone’s counsel hook, line, and sinker is generally a bad idea. You want to objectively listen to everyone, thank them for their counsel, filter out what is irrelevant, identify what is useful, and adjust as may be necessary. Any other approach is counter-productive and will put you in a lot of problems.

My third most redeeming attribute (not necessarily redeeming depending on who you ask) is I prefer to be judged by the market. Not by people (who are mostly subjective), but by the raw authenticity of the market.

Understanding the market

The concept of “The market” is pretty common in entrepreneurship circles – it is generally defined as the audience you’re building for or the opportunity you’re trying to capture, but what really is the market? Well, for one (and depending on the nature of the business you operate), the market is NOT your individual customer. If you’re in B2G (Business to Government) or High-value B2B (Business to Business) where a single customer’s revenue contribution to your bottom line is consequential, then the market is probably your customer. However, if you’re in B2C or small-scale B2B where a single customer cannot necessarily influence the trajectory or sustainability of your business (unless that single customer is VeryDarkMan or some other controversial fellow), then the market is not just your customer; the market is the collective proclivity of the users you’re targeting.

It’s easy to assume they’re one and the same, but they aren’t; if your customer is a large government agency that makes up 40% of your revenues and they want a certain feature, you are obligated to give that to them (regardless of what your personal reservations concerning that feature are) to avoid losing that account. This is common in large-ticket B2B models, where your client is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, they ask you to jump, and you ask how high.

In more distributed models, the Market is more often than not the collective whims of your users; If a customer wants a certain feature, the real question is how many other users are clamoring for this feature, and how aligned is this feature to the overall direction the spirit of the market (more on this later) is been pulling you in? In other words, you don’t move at a single customer’s insistence, you need a stronger, more compelling and collective signal to move. A relatable example; assuming you run a mobile payments business with one million active users, and you decide to push pop-up ads to your customers every now and then to maximize engagement or draw user attention to certain features within your application, some users may find those pop-ups repulsive and go as far as deleting your application because of them. Now, if 20,000 users (a large number to be clear) delete your application because of that pop-up, 200,000 users engage with those pop-ups actively and contribute to new revenue (that probably covers up for the 20k users you lost), and the other 780k users couldn’t be bothered, you may have lost customers, but the spirit of the market is clearly in support of the direction you have treaded on and is probably imploring you to move on.

There are multiple examples of pockets of users despising a certain feature and being entirely wrong about it in the long run. Designers initially berated Figma (specifically the browser-based collaborative functions), today Figma is the gold standard for creating delightful digital experiences. There was a mini-revolt when Facebook introduced the NewsFeed in 2006, today that is a standard feature on every social media platform and people weren’t too happy when Google decided to display ads in search results, that decision (along with a plethora of other great choices) led to a US$200 billion a year ad business.

Understanding what the market really is, and how to separate signal from noise when trying to identify its pull, is a key requirement for people planning to build products that serve it.

On God

The most important attribute of the Christian faith is the existence of God – the Almighty Being who sits in the Heavens and exhibits Omnipresence, Omniscient, and Omnipotency. The Christian faith also provides additional context about God – he is the creator of the heavens and the earth, he loves his children (those who are “Born Again”) and he provides instructions to his children on the path they should tread on, disobeying those instructions is termed Sin, and disobedience to those instructions is usually linked to hurting other humans; lying, stealing, murder, etc are all neurotic behaviors he strictly advises his children against adopting. Similarly, he also tells his children to give to the needy, forgive offenders, treat everyone they meet with love, and even advises them to pray for their enemies – counsel that creates good outcomes in the world and is generally good for humanity.

If his children obey his instructions, they are promised heaven (streets of gold, mansions, pearly gates etc.), if they don’t, they may end up in hell (fire, brimstones, torment and things of that nature). Because they don’t want hell, they do the right thing (or at least try to), and the world is generally a better place because of that. There is a market version of this.

The Market

For one, who is God in this context? God is the market. Similar to how God is described as an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent being that sits on a throne in the heavens, the market also has certain characteristics:

1. The Market is a beast: the market is entirely illogical and can act in seemingly unpredictable ways in the short run. This is why certain counter-intuitive ideas and initiatives can enjoy broad-based market adoption, while other seemingly sensible ones flounder.
2. The Market is unemotional: unfortunately, the market doesn’t care whether the money you invested in it was your house rent, kids’ school fees or your mother’s medical bill; it will always act in whichever way it deems to be right.
3. The Market only responds to value: The market doesn’t care about how articulate you are, the market doesn’t care about how hard working or consistent you are, the only thing the market cares about is whether you are bringing value to the table or not. You can artificially insulate yourself from the market (by raising venture capital at a lopsided valuation), but the market will always catch up to you, regardless of how long it takes.
4. The Market provides feedback: The market tells you when you’re going wrong (although it has to work on its communication skills) and when you’re doing the right thing. The sign you’re wrong is usually (but not always) silence, no revenue, and customer churn; the sign you’re doing the right thing is customer pull and revenue.

It is important to note that the market is not your enemy, neither is the market your friend, The market is just what it is – the market. It’s similar to water and fire – water can quench your thirst and also quench your life (by drowning you). The same fire that cooks your food can also burn your house. This is also how the market behaves – helping you or destroying you is not necessarily its objective, your alignment with it, however, is what guarantees which of the two outcomes becomes your fate.

The Spirit of the Market

So, what is the spirit of the market? Similar to how God gives his children instructions, the spirit of the market is the market’s method of transmitting information to builders (its children). The best way to think of the market is as an artist. The market has a clear picture of what it wants a certain industry to look like, and it gives instructions to builders via its spirit to enable them paint that picture. The builder (entrepreneur, intrapreneur, etc.) holds the paint brush, while the spirit of the market guides them on what strokes to make to stay aligned with the market’s picture (this is what we call market feedback).

It is very important that we do not “Fear” the market, we are to embrace the market. Fearing the market and avoiding its feedback doesn’t make you noble; it’s just a subtle way to send yourself to entrepreneurship hell (more on that later).

Similar to how God anoints people and calls them “Chosen”, the spirit of the market also anoints people and calls them chosen. These anointed ones are the entrepreneurs who have a clear vision for an industry and push the world to align with that vision. Unlike others who have to iteratively figure out what picture the market is trying to paint, these ones seem to have that image naturally embedded within them and have an innate ability to push the world to accept that picture. These are the Steve Jobs of this world that ignore all conventional advice and build a closed operating system (iOS) when it made no sense at the time to do so, these are the Elon Musk’s of this world that against all odds (and Harvard professor perspectives) build a successful Electric Vehicle company, the Brian Chesky’s of this world who against rational thinking build a business that allows total strangers stay in the homes of other total strangers.

This is where the concept of founder-market fit comes in, a person the market has anointed and given a vision to build within a certain vertical. Similar to how God anoints Moses, David, and Jesus in the Bible, these men/women are anointed and given a special “grace” that empowers them to build and prosper within certain markets against all odds.

While Christians serve God, Entrepreneurs serve the spirit of the market.

Entrepreneurship Hell

The main difference between the biblical hell and entrepreneurship hell (excluding the fire and all) is that biblical hell is for eternity, entrepreneurship hell is not. Entrepreneurship hell is similar to the “Go to Jail” space in the monopoly board game – you may become docile for a while, but you don’t have to remain there forever.

Similar to how biblical Hell is reserved for those who disobey God’s instructions, entrepreneurship hell is reserved for those who disobey the market. Those who the market via feedback were told to get left, but either due to stubbornness, or an inability to decipher what the market was saying, went right, and kept moving in that direction until they fell into a pit they couldn’t dig themselves out of. Almost all entrepreneurs have spent some time in entrepreneurship hell – Reid Hoffman (SocialNet), Travis Kalanick (Scour Inc), and Stewart Butterfield (Ludicorp), to name a few, spent some time in entrepreneurship hell before bouncing back and starting the ventures (Linkedin, Uber and Slack respectively) that made them household names.

While avoiding entrepreneurship hell is a noble cause, you want to make sure you only end up there once, learn the required lessons and come out on the other side stronger, smarter and a much more pious disciple of the market ready to take another stab at value creation, and more than willing to pay attention to the cues of the market and act accordingly.

The self-regulating nature of the spirit of the market is a good thing; when we obey it, we create value for consumers, the broader industry, and our shareholders. When we disobey it, we eviscerate shareholder value and punish customers with substandard products and experiences. This is why the market punishes dissidents after a while for disobedience by destroying their companies and sending them to entrepreneurship hell, where they get to learn how to be better and come back stronger.

Conclusion

Entrepreneurship and building are, in my honest opinion, the highest calling of mankind. Understanding the nature of the market and orienting yourself to build in line with the spirit of the market plays a key role in birthing successful and consequential businesses that have an indelible impact on the trajectory of humanity.

Inspired By The Holy Spirit