At this stage, we get to feel something that is rare for a lot of tech companies: the glory of not being told what to do.
Is there any feeling more glorious? So there we were. Strangers in a strange land. We weren’t implementing changes based on the insights we gleaned from data. As I have mentioned previously, we weren’t a data-driven company. (Is it even safe to make that sort of admission these days? Or is it like admitting to a gambling addiction?)
At WeTransfer, we did what we thought made sense, and most of what made sense to us ran counter to the Bluffer’s Guide to advertising online. Their message was everything we didn’t want to do. And because it was our own money, because we weren’t saddled with a rampant urge to transform ourselves into greedy, grasping Valley animals, we never ran out of funds.
If you start a business in the US and take money in the US, there will soon be someone at your shoulder, speaking in a charming American accent, telling you what to do. The advice they’ll offer will always have worked in the past.
A glut of conferences out there in tech-land offer this same brand of tested advice. The purpose of the advice is to define the attributes of a successful software-as-a-service business. Many hold the key of how to dredge the most from your SaaS customers.
They’re not lies. They’re based on facts. But notice the past tense of ‘based’. That word tells you nothing about the future.
We’d had enough of this cheap brand of TED Talk wisdom. It stirred in us a feeling related to one of Herman Melville’s characters. Let’s call it the Bartleby School of Business. ‘We’d prefer not to.’ Sure, you can TED Talk an idea until it has the veneer of truth. But we’d prefer not to listen.
Someone else could gather evidence and produce a shiny theory. We’d prefer not to believe. I’ve endlessly had Henry Ford quoted at me – until I later found out they weren’t even Ford’s words. ‘If you asked people what they wanted before the automobile, they wanted a faster horse,’ Ford didn’t say. Every time I hear the quote, my eyes glaze over. It poses a bullshit punchline: ‘They would never have asked for an automobile.’
Apple likes to employ this horsey mythology. Steve Jobs wasn’t iterating some variation on existing computers. New ideas sprang from his forehead. People love that he shied away from doing fusty ‘research’. Apple was based on his insight: ‘You can’t even imagine how different this next idea is going to be from a horse.’
It worked because, obviously – I’m looking up at you, St Steve – the guy was a genius. Geniuses, in Silicon Valley, are so much more enjoyable after the fact. In the present tense, no one enjoys considering a genius’s brilliant advancements. Everyone wants the next step to be based on data.
System architects and data architects and data scientists – and a league of other surveillance miners – are always happy to tell you what you need to do, and which conditions need to be cultivated in order to succeed. They will know far better than anyone else. They are, after all, professionals. They’ve assumed the role in our society of high priests and priestesses.
Exceptions to the rule exist. I’ve noticed how much people love talking about a certain cadre of forward-pressing entrepreneurs, but they’d never dare follow the lead of these individuals. Everyone would love to be Elon Musk, but who would have dared follow him? And who would allow a Musk-y figure to be created now – in a dazzling burst of self-mythology – if he was playing with your own money?
This is probably why WeTransfer couldn’t raise any. This is probably why we revelled in that glorious feeling of not being told what to do. We were told:
‘That’s not how you do online advertising.’
‘No one’s going to buy that.’
‘File sharing is dead.’
‘Gmail is going to kill you.’
‘Google is going to kill you.’
‘Everyone wants to destroy you.’
These were the messages emanating from the Valley: YOU WILL BE DESTROYED.
And this is the language: threats, hacks, destruction, burn. The stakes are high, environments turn toxic. If you can shield yourself from the DESTRUCTION!!! you might be able to usher a business into the world, especially if you’re overseas, if you emerge from a more pliable environment, if you’re not surrounded by other companies.
Our choices shielded the business from the violence associated with the language above. And, in our case, they shielded our users as well. Our freedom, our ability to forego being told what to do, allowed us to ignore fear-driven impulses all the way down.
The reason we had the confidence to keep the WeTransfer process open and transparent – instead of heeding the calls to install an awful sign-up form – originates, I truly believe, from the fact that Holland is so safe, you’re not constantly alert to the prospect of a threat appearing.
Schools, for example, are not doing lockdown drills. Optimistic products come from optimistic environments. In the early stages, we didn’t have to listen to a booming American voice telling us: ‘The first person you need to hire is a security manager. The first hiring at WeTransfer has got to be somebody who can raise the firewalls, assemble the necessary protection and make sure the user understands compliance.’
Occasionally we’d consult an ethical hacker and then, after feeling misused and kind of dirtied by the experience, we’d agree to abstain from repeating that sort of encounter.
In the US, there are eleven bigger file-sharing services and they employ the same sort of unnerving language listed above. They talk about security, protection, and the various threats we face. We know that language. We speak the language. Of course we do. But our language is hidden. That’s the part we hide. That’s the part we take care of ourselves.
The difference between a design-driven business and a tech-driven business is that designers look for openness and simplicity. Technologists look for threats and weaknesses. A good designer aims to simplify, reduce clutter, focus and clarify navigation. A designer strives for cleanliness, simple signage and usability. Technologists are drawn inexorably towards features, add-ons, extensions, complexities beyond complexities, the production of better code, efficiencies. The driving force is to develop a powerful tool that will handle scale.
That’s all fine and good. I’m not disparaging those goals. But somebody out there has got to Bartleby this: ‘I’d just prefer not to go down that route.’ Somebody out there has to be the beetle. Sorry: Beetle.
Like that Volkswagen car, WeTransfer has a classic design that we’ve just refined over time. The edges have become a little more rounded, but nothing has really changed. It’s evolved. My hunch is that, in the future, we’ll be considered a design classic. On the web.
And, to keep going with the Volkswagens, what we’ll probably do in the future is explore what our Golf looks like, our Passat, but it will all come under the WeTransfer brand. Who’s going to tell us otherwise?
Keep looking at some of the finest cars. No one is second-guessing the importance of a great engine. You wouldn’t be able to start a car company without one. But don’t minimize the importance of the designer building the exterior. The combination will rule the road – the well-tuned engine, small and efficient and clean, surrounded by, wrapped in, a design people will fall in love with.
(One differentiation: we don’t compare ourselves with Volkswagen when it comes to trust. Got to be clear there.)
Yes, it all comes back to trust. Every single one of these transfers is an act of trust. It’s an ongoing act of trust that this company’s involved with, with countless millions of people around the world. Each one of those single actions has to be performed well. The file has to show up. You’re transferring the stuff of life. It’s worth letting people know that, so that they’re aware of the stakes. So it doesn’t sound like a utility service.
When we springboarded into the US, it was important our values didn’t get damaged on the way over – for the sake of my kids and the company.
As a company, we were fully formed, out of our childhood. Thankfully, we had a strong set of values.
That was a good thing. We moved to the US two months before Donald Trump was elected. The world seemed younger then, fresher, more alive, in those autumn months of 2016. To move here and witness the election was to see a second Brexit on an epic scale. I suddenly felt less a part of an outwardly looking nation and more like an immigrant myself. Which I was.
Six months of disbelief followed, and a permeating sense of unease settled in. I’d moved my family to a country where they felt unsafe for the first time ever. In Holland, safety is taken for granted. Now we worried about everything, including basic human rights.
After the grim first six months, I realized this could be one of the most influential times to be in the US, both for my children and for my company. Both could actually be a part of some push to enact change.
What the move also stressed was that if you’re going to be a company that allows for the free movement of data and ideas, take your ideas with you, along with your values. It’s important to take the best values from different places. WeTransfer’s service spans borders.
For instance, we could politely say no to the American idea of burning through. With some companies there’s almost a touch of pride: ‘We burned through forty million!’
There was a glory in saying no to this, too. Surely, there’s got to be a way of celebrating frugality? If so, we haven’t seen it in Silicon Valley.
Could it exist? Not when the goal is to change the world. Then you’ve got to be crazy. You’ve got to be able to go all out. Or was it all in, or go for broke, or the sky’s the limit? Take another juicy selection from the smorgasbord of cliché. In the American context, frugality is ridiculous. How are you ever going to create massive change with frugality holding you back? Ask someone in Amsterdam and they might be comfortable telling you certain companies are not out there just to create massive change. They want to create something really good. Some of those companies with outsized global aspirations – aiming to be world changers – are just a little bit delusional, fuelled by the myths of Silicon Valley.
We had the glory of saying no to them.
If WeTransfer had started in the US, it would not be the company it is today. It’s only 140 people – quite a lot when you need to stuff them in a minivan, but nothing compared to the hiring practices of the US. It’s grounded. If you want a decision made, we’ll decide it tomorrow and it will be done the day after.
If you’ve got a grounded Dutch company that is actually making sure the company stays real, you’ve got healthy checks and balances in place to go yeah, okay, that’s good. We have a rule: we try to stay at 40 per cent EBITDA (earnings before interest and tax, etc.), so we want to stay profitable every year. We’re not burning through cash for the sake of burning through cash.
Our goal is actually to have cash in the bank, to have a back-up plan, to make sure that we’re going to be around in a few years’ time. That’s got to be one of the most boring concepts Silicon Valley will ever have encountered. What are you supposed to do? Use that money, go out and spend it, put it in something? Our viewpoint is, if we’ve got something really good that we think we’re going to do, then we’ll put the money into it. Until we do, we’re going to keep it.
Put that into a searing TED Talk. ‘How to Be Crushingly Responsible and Wildly Pragmatic. You Won’t Believe Tip #5!’
That’s our Dutch sensibility, exported to the sun of California. It also comes from the fact that, in the beginning, we didn’t have any money. We were just desperately trying to put money in the bank to make sure that we could afford to pay the bills.