Varun Kumar

August 28, 2023

Most Tech Companies Don't Actually Care About Customers

Almost every single company website out there has something about "putting the customer first." Not only are these words empty, especially when you wait days for support to respond, but they are often the opposite of what the tech company values. Sure, the customer might come first because some management book told you it would help sales, but when it comes to deciding between the customer and a successful exit for the founders, there's no doubt that most companies would choose the latter.

It's just how the system works. You start a company and make a product only to exit a few years later, hopefully with a bag of cash in hand. Investors, founders, and employees all work on startups hoping for this outcome. The options are to either exit successfully or fizzle out in unspectacular ways. Regardless, what happens to the product, this thing you've been working on and thinking about for years? If you've done things right, customers  rely on your product to do things in their life. They might even love it for what it does. The company doesn't care -- they've just won the lottery!

Even if a big, impressive tech company acquires you, your product doesn't have a good chance of survival. While the founder walks away with a LinkedIn post, a new management position, and a bag of cash, the product might linger on for a few years, neglected and forgotten by the people who made it, or worse, be completely shut down in lightning speed. I find this disconnect in mindset between pre- startup sale and post- startup sale mind boggling. The philosophy when you're growing a company is all about putting the user first and building something that people want. To what end? So that you can then completely abandon the thing that supposedly does something useful and move on with your life. That's what passes for success in the startup world. What this means is that the customer-first ethos is an empty suit; a facade that falls apart when put to the test.

I experienced this firsthand with Impira, a machine learning company that a startup I interned for was using. With astonishing swiftness after their acquisition by Figma, the company shut down a product that many startups relied on and left their website with a letter from the CEO thanking their "customers, investors and employees" and mentioning that "it has been an honor to learn from each of you and grow together." Grow together? Really? You just killed something that people used every day, leaving them in a state opposite of growth. A month later, their entire website was shut down, with the only trace being their Crunchbase and LinkedIn profiles, which now read "Impira (acquired by Figma)."

Companies should be honest about what happens when they get acquired. Instead of some vague, virtuous message about one team joining another, caring about customers means caring about your product till the end of time. Software is often treated as a financing tool, either for your own enrichment or the enrichment of investors. What if your product was actually a physical thing in the world? Yanking the rug out from under it is like stealing it from the homes of people who've relied on it for years. Making things that last a lifetime, beloved by people, is a sign of the best brands in the world (Rolex, Porsche). There's great potential for tech companies to aspire to be the same: sustainable, long-term businesses whose products are here to stay.

About Varun Kumar

See more about me at varunkumar.com