Creating the Patagonia of social networks
Remember Patagonia's "Don't buy this jacket" ad?
It wasn't about Patagonia not wanting you to buy their products. It was about them wanting you to think a bit more about what you were buying, how you were buying it, why you were buying it.
Sunslider is being designed to match that feeling. It’s not about having worse products; it’s about having better products, products that respect us more, and that don’t end up putting tens of billions of dollars in a single set of hands.
How will we do it? We’re still at the beginning of the journey, but these are the general lines we’re working with at the moment.
More democratic internal governance
Startups tend to resemble dicatorships at the beginning, because it's hard to create something from nothing. Decision-making needs to be quick, based in an extremely clear vision of what is being built.
The problem is that too many of those startup founders then see themselves as needing to continue to be dictators, instead of building a company that can function with or without them. But the right team doesn't need to continually check in to know what they should be doing; the right team is motivated by not only the mission, but also their having concrete incentives (such as annual bonuses or dividends) to keep the company running well.
It shouldn't stop there, though. Whether through unionization, moving to a co-op model, or any number of other possibilities (if you have any great ideas, get in touch!), we want to continue pushing a democratic model within the company.
So if we're stable and profitable and not there yet, please, whether you're a user or an employee, keep our feet to the fire to make sure we get there. How will you know?
More transparency
One real benefit to having public companies is that they're required to provide regular reporting that anyone can access, clearly detailing how the company is functioning.
As I said above, the goal at Sunslider is to stay private so that we don't fall into the "shareholders-above-all" mentality that drives bad product / social / environmental / etc. decisions. But even without any legal requirement to do so, we will issue an annual report detailing our finances, company structure, and other tidbits to make sure that every Sunslider knows where their money is going and why. (Defector Media's annual report is a good example of how this can work.)
Again, we believe in creating profits (there are reasons why we aren't a non-profit, but those are for another post), and we believe that our early investors deserve a return for the risk that they're taking.
But how much profit is "enough"? Where can we say, “Hey, we’ve made plenty this year, let’s pull back on the advertising for a while”? Where can we say, “We’ve got an extra bit of money, let’s give our users two months free next year”? These are the kinds of questions we can't wait to ask ourselves. And by publishing our annual numbers, you can hold us accountable.
Giving back
Beyond efforts at Patagonia itself, Yvon Chouinard’s 1% for the Planet initiative is a model that we will follow, dedicating 1% of our annual revenues to causes that are near to our hearts and our business.
This will take various forms, but some of the ideas that we plan to support are:
Caring for content moderators, who over the past years have been doing the extremely dirty work of training AI so that the public at large is not exposed to the many, many, MANY attempts by bad actors to make our lives worse.
The ongoing battle for women’s rights, from domestic violence initiatives to ensuring access to appropriate, patient-centered healthcare.
Supporting LGBTQ+ communities so that every individual can live their truth, choosing the path that best matches their needs and desires.
All of this is possible by starting with the initial form of a French SAS, which is basically the equivalent of an LLC. Because there’s no limit to the number of shareholders, we have room to raise money at the beginning, relying on individuals rather than venture capital funds.
Later, when the company and team are stable, we can adjust the corporate form to move towards a co-op/employee-driven model that can keep delivering long-term value without ever losing sight of the one thing that will keep us healthy over the long-term: happy users.
Don't miss our other two launch blogs, where we explain more about Building something better than Insta and The motivations behind Sunslider: The post the lawyers will want us to take down.