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by LMYahooTFY 2140 days ago
Thank you for the story and insight, I find it mirrors a lot of Chamath Palihapitiya's perspective on capital being an instrument for change.

What are the hardest challenges you're facing lately in operating a privacy focused VPN service?
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kfreds 2140 days ago
As for our current hardest challenge:

Good question. As an organization probably helping each other ensure we stay focused on what needs to be done and what is right for the organization, weighing Time/Cost/Quality, and so on.

I'm not saying we're bad at it, it's just that remaining vigilant on keeping the feedback-adaptation loop short seems key, regardless of layer on the reality stack so to speak. On that subject, check out complexity science if you want your mind blown on the extent of recurring themes in physics, chemistry, biology, economics, computer science, etc.

Personally I have definitely struggled with perfectionism in the past, and still do to some extent. This greatly impacted my productivity, and those around me. Thankfully we hired a great CEO four years ago and I've since focused mostly on strategy and research. I've also rectified my perfectionism issue a bit :)

This is what I've been doing for the past two years, and anticipate spending time on for another few: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/6/3/system-transparency-fut...

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querez 2138 days ago
Do you have any pointers for people who'd like to dig into complexity science?
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kfreds 2140 days ago
Yes. Well, capital used correctly gives you leverage. Sort of the same. That can be used for a social net good or bad.

Related, I definitely agree with others in the thread that profit can be a measure of social impact. Whether your impact is positive or negative however depends on what solution you offer as an entrepreneur, and to what problem. Two farmers might have the same profit, but one is selling ecological greens, and the other one is selling high-fructose corn syrup. One is contributing to the obesity epidemic, the other one isn't.

In any case, the core of entrepreneurship is solving problems for people and organisations. The more people value and use your products and services the more profit you'll make, assuming your business model is economically sustainable. And you should want it to be! If your costs grow faster than your revenue, there's going to be a point where you have to shut down and can't help more people.

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