Building something better than Insta
Sunslider is based on a set of convictions:
People deserve a top-notch user experience.
A series of fatal flaws in how tech companies have been built over the past 15 years is actively creating bad experiences, from the Meta universe of Insta and Facebook to streaming services with millions of titles and nothing to watch to [whatever one you hate most, there are plenty to choose from].
Given where digital technology is today, those flaws can be corrected and better companies can be built.
In short, I had an idea that started living rent-free in my head:
Why not create the Patagonia of social networks?
Over the past months, I couldn't shake that idea. Every time that one of our modern oligarchs would come out and say something ridiculous, demonstrating not just their disconnect from normal people but their utter disdain for us, I thought about what it would really take to turn that thought into reality.
Sunslider is the result of that obsession.
An Instagram alternative with a different business model
The shareholder-centric “winner takes all” Silicon Valley mindset sets companies up to make bad decisions, decisions that end up hurting users in many ways. It’s a mindset that turns people into targets, valued only for the data that can be extracted from them and their ability to deliver their eyeballs into the hands of attention merchants.
Take a recent example, Meta’s decision to reduce the role of their privacy teams when it comes to product development. In a world where concerns about privacy and big data are only becoming more relevant, this step is clearly oriented by the need to:
Capture as much attention and data as possible through Meta’s various products, such as Instagram;
Use that attention and data to grow company revenues, satisfying the corporation’s desire to privilege shareholders above all else;
And they'll keep making similar moves because the company has been wasting tens of billions of dollars on things like… this.
Leaving the specifically bad decisions at Meta aside, no small part of our current situation – politically, socially, economically – is linked to an original sin of the business world, put forward by Milton Friedman back in the 1970s: that the social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits. This has become accepted to such a point that shareholders-above-all is often seen as the only way to do business.
But there's another world in which investors put money into a company, in the expectation of earning a reasonable return over time. Those same investors don't have to be actively placed in front of the company's users or the company's employees; instead, a much more balanced state of equilibrium can exist between them.
Creating that equilibrium starts from the beginning.
Be profitable, and prosper
The vast majority of tech company stories involve venture capital. Venture is a very specific industry, one that grew in a context of great uncertainty, when companies were needing to seek new business models, ones that hadn't been seen before.
Venture is still being used in many industries today, and in ways that fit its original purpose: climate tech, B2B SaaS, fintech and many more.
But social media isn't really all that complicated at this point: create a community of happy users. If you can do that, you have a choice between advertising or subscription.
Or, better, you can give them the choice. That's what we're going to do at Sunslider. When the time is right, and we've got a happy, sustainably growing community of users, we'll offer a choice:
a reasonably priced annual subscription for the ad-free app (say, $15, although don't hold me to that ;)
an ad-supported app that isn't meant to extract the maximum value from each user. We won't be selling your data to the highest bidder; instead, we'll know a minimal amount of information about you (age, location, maybe gender, some self-reported interests that you tell us about when signing up), and that's it. Sunslider does not track your every move across the internet. We will not thrive by vacuuming up as much of your data as possible.
By getting to this model as quickly as possible, without loading the company down with large amounts of VC money and expectations, we can establish that "users / employees / shareholder" equilibrium that is needed for making healthy business decisions.
For those who doubt it’s possible, remember that today's ultra-targeted ad businesses that we call social networks were not necessary for building good businesses before. Magazines and TV functioned very well over a long period without needing any more than the very basic information regarding their circulation and general audience. The idea that great online businesses can't keep working in much the same way is simply false, and is in no small part driven by greed.
(And don’t underestimate how many costs have been created in the tech world by fundraising norms that create the need to hire quickly and massively to justify ever-increasing valuations. By concentrating from the beginning on profitability, we can make sure that we’re taking care of the team we have without feeling outside pressure to increase headcount so that it looks nice in a Forbes Contributor fluff piece.)
Long-term gains for all
The positive downstream effects of profitability and sustainable growth are significant:
Avoiding venture capital avoids creating an outside timeline for success. Venture capital funds have to deliver returns to investors within a relatively short period, around 5-7 years depending on when the investment is made; venture simply isn’t designed for steady growth. That creates pressure on the company to stop focusing on a holistic view of the product, and to instead become obsessed with exponential growth.
Rather than delivering a massive return for shareholders via an exit or IPO, we want to remain a private company for the long-term. We’ll deliver returns for shareholders, yes, but via annual dividends based on our ability to turn a profit. This is again meant to ensure that we are never forced to make decisions that put constant growth above the needs of our users and employees.
By keeping our users in control of how they want to support Sunslider, we ensure that they always stay at the top of our priority list.
Don't miss our other two launch blogs, where we explain more about Creating the Patagonia of social networks and The motivations behind Sunslider: The post the lawyers will want us to take down.