What are we all striving for - shareholder value?

Some interesting thoughts for the long weekend on how to not get caught up in the eternal pursuit for more money. I have to agree with Jack Welch - "Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy".

Questions I Wish VCs Would Ask Entrepreneurs (Hint: They’re Not About ‘Shareholder Value’)

By Upendra Shardanand - Fri 22 May 2009 08:38 AM PST

Upendra Shardanand is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Daylife, which helps publishers add content and inventory without additional staff or engineering. He also co-founded Firefly Network, a spinoff from his work at the MIT Media Lab, and sold the company to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) in 1998. Upendra was the founding partner at the venture firm The Accelerator Group, and was the Director of Technology at Time Warner (NYSE: TWX).

Several years ago, when I was with the Accelerator Group, we were in discussions with a music-industry executive about a music-related venture. At some point he e-mailed a request: He wanted my colleagues and me to send him a list of our favorite bands. A slightly puzzling request, but we complied – who doesn’t like doing a top-10 list? Afterwards, he shared that he was very pleased with our answers – not one gun-toting, life-of-crime musician on the list! Apparently, he had no desire to work with dangerous acts. Life is too short to get shot.

As odd as that question may have been, it was honest and a nice change of pace from the normal litany of questions one gets from partners or VCs. By now I heard hundreds of investor pitches, and every investor seems to be reading off the same crib sheet. They’re all very focused on how best to maximize shareholder value (as opposed to avoiding getting shot, or some other criterion).

It’s long been accepted that the singular objective for any company is to make everyone money. The more the better. And I’ve been in many a discussion where it seems the wisest way to cut to the chase on a strategic business decision is to ask, “OK, but what will most maximize shareholder value?”

So it was interesting to see Jack Welch recently say: “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy … Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers, and your products.” (I’d personally add suppliers, partners, the environment, and society at large.)

Some buy a trickle-down logic and argue that if it’s good for the shareholders and makes good business sense, then you will end up taking care of all other stakeholders.

Really? In an age where investors and management can get out quick, leaving all the other stakeholders holding the bag, what we end up with is Enron, AIG and Tyco. Those companies may be the extreme examples, but for a long time in the tech industry we’ve had a setup where every dot-com investor and entrepreneur could exit fast and buy that Ferrari, without necessarily having built anything of lasting value. Perhaps more innocuous then Enron, but no less a wasted opportunity to do something truly great.

And companies are like snowballs being rolled down a hill: Once they’ve been pointed in a direction, it’s really hard to change course. A company’s mission only gets watered down with time, its resolve weaker with age.

Perhaps in this era of Obamanomics and global cataclysm, where the maxim of endless growth fueled by endless consumption is being questioned, we’re starting to reset a bit, and the dog is starting to wag the tail. Perhaps we’re starting to see job hunters pursue purpose over money.

Perhaps publications will find new ways to keep score besides who raised how much and who exited for how much. Surely there are metrics other than the dollar by which to judge companies? (Read these words of wisdom on the value of the right metrics from RFK Jr.).

As exit opportunities become scarcer, perhaps entrepreneurs will start attacking hard, long-term projects with real benefits as opposed to get-rich-quick schemes. I once congratulated one of my investors, Scott Heiferman, on the success of his young company Meetup. I was deeply impressed whenever I spotted a Meetup group at a café or Whole Foods cafeteria, and I kept seeing them more and more often. But Scott was visibly irritated.

“Brands or anything that really lasts or matters often take decades to build. We haven’t done anything yet,” he said.

And perhaps boards and VCs will take Jack Welch’s advice and depart from their scripts and start viewing shareholder value as a result, not an objective. I’ll give a discount on the deal if any VC ever asks me questions along the lines of, “what do you do to make your office a fantastic place to work?” or “would you disclose the identity of one of your users to the Chinese government” or “who are you fighting for?”

The things we read, the colleagues we keep, the investors we have. Picking them carefully will determine the measures by which we’re held accountable. Life is too short to get shot.