Your Customer is Your Partner

Why get into business?

To make money?

To move the world forward?

To create a movement?

To solve a problem?

For any of the above, it makes sense to get people using your product or service to fall in love with it. It makes sense for the people who engage with your business to become ambassadors, to go out of their way for their friends to use it too. Mass adoption is needed to build a goliath business.

There are a few ways to achieve this mass adoption…

Traditional network effect - the social media model of becoming more valuable the more people are on it. You only want to be on Facebook if your friends are using it too.

Another method, is exorbitant spend on referral - If I get $100 for a referral, I’m going to make sure my friends start using that product.

The most appealing method to me - is to shift away from company-customer ; shift from business-client relationship… into one collective community. To shift into the idea that a new business is an opportunity for everyone involved to come together as one: Leadership, employees, customers and partners aligned as a collective to achieve the vision of the business.

The best way to achieve this? To create that sense of ownership for all stakeholders. For all stakeholders to feel that the company belongs to them. Over the next decade, the fastest growing businesses will adopt this - customers will metaphorically and literally own the businesses they engage with as a part of their identity.

We can’t all initiate ideas that will move the world forward, but we can all support them, belong to them, form part of a movement. The companies that understand this - that can grow a customer network of impassioned owners will rule the next decade. Equity crowdfunding is a way to achieve this for a growing private business - the modern fusion of traditional crowdfunding and public markets for growing private businesses; the modern way to raise capital for a growing startup.

For mass adoption in modern business, give your customers ownership and build a movement.