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Very early in my career, one of my first jobs out of college was at a small startup working on remote patient monitoring. Coincidentally it was also where my RaceOS cofounder and I met for the first time! Not long into my tenure I was having lunch with one of the cofounders and at one point in the conversation, the cofounder casually said, “If it’s not a billion dollar idea, why even bother working on it?”
That lunch happened over a decade ago and I don’t even remember what we were talking about at the time, but I still remember that one statement. It’s a statement that at first glance may seem reasonable, but the more you dissect it, the more hollow it starts to feel. To be clear I don’t think this person shouldn’t have this opinion or that building a company for financial returns is not a good enough reason to try and build a company. But it’s not the reason why we’re building RaceOS.
When we started talking about building a product and a company, one of the things we agreed on was that if it was a billion dollar idea, that’s great, but that’s not a goal. Yes, businesses are by definition money making endeavors which makes it easy to correlate success with revenue. But far too often that slowly becomes the only thing being chased after, diluting the new ideas and chipping away at the focus on customers.
In many ways I wish I could paint about a grand vision we have for the world that many could get on board with. It certainly makes for a more interesting read! But a grand vision would probably be a bit disingenuous. In reality, our reasons are much simpler than that. We hope to, on the day to day, enjoy working together and with others. Be it future folks who join us or customers. We hope to infuse a little bit of ourselves and our principles into the company and products we build. We hope that in the end we’re able to get people outside more, working on their physical fitness and improving their health with a community around them.
On that last reason (the first two are important as well, but for another day), one of the things that gets us most excited about working on RaceOS is that it’s a product that as more people use it, it means more people are getting outside, working on their physical fitness, and are present others who are also doing the same. So with a company metric like revenue, there’s a direct connection to that growth as an indicator that there’s also growth in people being healthier and building community.
Of course we will have to ensure that RaceOS is viable as a business! But it may not be a billion dollar idea and we’re ok with that. The more important question is whether the outcome was worth the effort. Revenue growth is an important metric to track and one we’ll need to work on to ensure we can work on RaceOS full time. But it’s not the end goal. It’s just another metric along the way that helps us know if we’re making good progress on our mission and delivering a product that people really love.
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