Reddit’s cofounder said that at first the company felt like ‘a homework assignment that got out of hand’ rather than a business::Reddit’s cofounder Steve Huffman said in its early days he filled up most of the site with content using different accounts until it got more users.
The idea that non-profits aren’t profiting-seeking is the biggest misunderstanding in the world. I work for a large one, and it’s absolutely the same rampant penny-squeezing 30%-unsustainable-growth-seeking monstrosity as anything in the Valley. The pittance that gets thrown to “charitable causes” is just another tax dodge in an otherwise profit-demanding venture. Swap “shareholders” with “the endowment” and there’s no difference at all.
Much better to be a for-profit company with a charter demanding where profits in excess of modest growth targets are spent internally.
That’s too bad. I’d be interested to see some statistics about how customer experience is, on average, with non-profits vs private companies vs public companies. Maybe it’s still a net win even if there are awful non-profits