As someone else said, you have to remain 100% private. The second you become publicly traded, that’s it.
Even then, if you want to make a difference in an established industry, you all but require preexisting deep pockets or some extremely disruptive technology that can’t be easily copied.
You then have to remain steadfast in the face of the ridiculous money that will be dangled in front of you to be bought out.
I agree. The environment in which this must function is corrosive to the very idea, hence why I’m asking it openly here. It’s a pretty dense minefield.
I’m no lawyer, but I’ve mused a lot about some kind of legal “dead man switch” that somehow renders the company value-less if it deviated from the intended path. Something built into the company’s charter and founding documents, not unlike some kind of constitution.
Having seen OpenAI’s trajectory of becoming a for-profit and not being “Open” in any serious sense of the word, I genuinely think market forces can absolutely pry open any chest they perceive as containing gold.
My personal conclusion is that you genuinely have to deal with human beings. Take federation for instance: we can try to decentralize these things and make an incredibly solid system, but we still depend on people coming to the realization that this is a good idea and adopting it for their personal/professional internet use.
Now I’m wondering if there such a thing as a decentralized private company? I can’t think of anything beyond having subsidiaries in different countries, but that still requires a parent or at least a main point of contact in the form of the owner. So we’re back to humans.
As someone else said, you have to remain 100% private. The second you become publicly traded, that’s it.
Even then, if you want to make a difference in an established industry, you all but require preexisting deep pockets or some extremely disruptive technology that can’t be easily copied.
You then have to remain steadfast in the face of the ridiculous money that will be dangled in front of you to be bought out.
There’s a lot of stars that need to align.
I agree. The environment in which this must function is corrosive to the very idea, hence why I’m asking it openly here. It’s a pretty dense minefield.
I’m no lawyer, but I’ve mused a lot about some kind of legal “dead man switch” that somehow renders the company value-less if it deviated from the intended path. Something built into the company’s charter and founding documents, not unlike some kind of constitution.
I really don’t know if you could.
Having seen OpenAI’s trajectory of becoming a for-profit and not being “Open” in any serious sense of the word, I genuinely think market forces can absolutely pry open any chest they perceive as containing gold.
My personal conclusion is that you genuinely have to deal with human beings. Take federation for instance: we can try to decentralize these things and make an incredibly solid system, but we still depend on people coming to the realization that this is a good idea and adopting it for their personal/professional internet use.
Now I’m wondering if there such a thing as a decentralized private company? I can’t think of anything beyond having subsidiaries in different countries, but that still requires a parent or at least a main point of contact in the form of the owner. So we’re back to humans.