How generosity and value-giving build lasting tech companies

Executive overview

Most founders build products that deliver minimal value while optimising for fundraising optics. The real driver of tech progress — from Linux to Google Ads to Excel — is giving customers more value than you charge for.

Dig into real customer problems early, even if it feels like consulting. The insight you gain is what makes a generalizable product possible.

If you leave value on the table for your customers instead of trying to take it all, you're in the game.

The basic economic contract

• If a tool lets customers make more money than it costs, they buy it — every time.
• Google Ads worked because advertisers earned far more per click than they paid Google.
• Excel made office workers 10–100x more productive; the hardware and software cost was irrelevant against that ROI.

Why founders build things that don't solve problems

• Founders fear that slow growth means no fundraising — so they optimise for optics over value.
• The result: products that superficially resemble software people pay for, without solving an actual problem.
• A second fear: if a user's problem is too specific, building for them means building something no one else wants.
• This fear of "being a consultant" is rooted in wanting to skip to blitz-scale before understanding the problem.

Why early consulting fear is exactly wrong

• Early on, most founders haven't verified how customers actually make money — assumptions are likely wrong.
• Google's founders weren't experts in performance marketing when they launched; they learned by building and talking.
• Twitch didn't understand what streamers needed until they built alongside them.
• Digging into specific customer problems generates the insight needed to know what's generalizable.
• Ask directly: "How can this help you make more money?" — it's not a dumb question.

Give value before you ask for anything

• Most cold outreach asks for the customer's time in exchange for nothing — that's the wrong ratio.
• One YC company sent personalised video audits of prospects' onboarding flows before asking for a meeting.
• Customers replied because they received something useful first.
• Giving value upfront in outreach applies the same principle as building a great product.

The historical pattern: giving built the internet

• Early software was free — it existed to extract value from hardware sales, not as a product itself.
• The free software movement (GCC, Linux, SQLite) built the infrastructure that powers Google, YouTube, and Android.
• Proprietary software charging was an innovation of the late 70s/80s — not the default.
• The acceleration of technological progress is partly a function of how much value builders gave away.