I wear the same T-shirt every day, and I have a relatably unkempt haircut. I remind you of the smart kids from high school, so I give you hope that the future might be okay.
My company has a slogan like “Connect Everyone” or “Build Beautiful Stuff,” and I promise you that we’ll never quietly change that to something more morally ambiguous like “Do the Right Thing.”
I’m about your age. Maybe a little older. People our age are chill and socially engaged, so I support things like civil rights, access to education, and medical research. You could never imagine me sitting in the front row at the inauguration of a far-right ruler who promised to destroy those things.
Because I dropped out of Stanford to start this company, you know for sure that it’s my life’s work. I’ll always be at the helm, so the idea that I’ll hand over the company to an ex-McKinsey consultant and retire to a Hawaiian compound built on cleared forest is preposterous.
I’m an engineer, so I have an objective, scientific view of the world. Everything I do is thought out and logical, and it means I won’t ever have the desire to surround myself with MBAs and yes-men who let me win at Catan.
Maybe they’ve made a movie about me already. In it, I come across as a passionate, smart, wide-eyed kid, and the worst thing it portrays me as doing is some light backstabbing. “Startups seem fun and exciting,” you’ll think. If I told you I would eventually focus my platform on giving Nazis a place to share their real-time thoughts on Disney movies, you wouldn’t believe it.
People fell in love with my product because it helped them do something useful, like connect with friends or store photos online for free. You believe my company will always stay true to you, the user, and that I won’t get distracted by fads or trends that boost my stock price.
Yes, you, my beloved user, are who has made me fabulously rich. You tolerate ads duct-taped to every surface of my app and have no reason to think I will eventually try to monetize you further by convincing you to strap data-harvesting cameras to your face.
I’m an early 2010s tech CEO. I care about the world. I care about you. And I promise you that the future is safe in my hands.
