What are the hardest challenges you're facing lately in operating a privacy focused VPN service?
Good question. As an organization probably helping each other ensure we stay focused on what needs to be done and what is right for the organization, weighing Time/Cost/Quality, and so on.
I'm not saying we're bad at it, it's just that remaining vigilant on keeping the feedback-adaptation loop short seems key, regardless of layer on the reality stack so to speak. On that subject, check out complexity science if you want your mind blown on the extent of recurring themes in physics, chemistry, biology, economics, computer science, etc.
Personally I have definitely struggled with perfectionism in the past, and still do to some extent. This greatly impacted my productivity, and those around me. Thankfully we hired a great CEO four years ago and I've since focused mostly on strategy and research. I've also rectified my perfectionism issue a bit :)
This is what I've been doing for the past two years, and anticipate spending time on for another few: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/6/3/system-transparency-fut...
Related, I definitely agree with others in the thread that profit can be a measure of social impact. Whether your impact is positive or negative however depends on what solution you offer as an entrepreneur, and to what problem. Two farmers might have the same profit, but one is selling ecological greens, and the other one is selling high-fructose corn syrup. One is contributing to the obesity epidemic, the other one isn't.
In any case, the core of entrepreneurship is solving problems for people and organisations. The more people value and use your products and services the more profit you'll make, assuming your business model is economically sustainable. And you should want it to be! If your costs grow faster than your revenue, there's going to be a point where you have to shut down and can't help more people.
I also appreciate the support and visibility you provide for WireGuard.
Thanks for running the service, it’s great!
My dream VPN app allows me to choose my protocol, DNS adblocking, multi provider integration, and VPN tunneling. Not sure what is all possible on iOS though. Passepartout is what I currently use, but it doesn’t support wireguard.
Was there anything you found difficult about balancing the for-profit and for-impact motives?
Is there any framework you used to help you make these kinds of decisions?
My cofounder Daniel and I viewed it as direct political action through entrepreneurship. In particular we wanted to protest Swedish surveillance legislation (FRA), which is partly why we chose a Swedish name for the service.
So far we have refused at least five serious offers of investment and acquisition, because we would rather retain control, even if that meant slow growth or obscurity.
As time went by the company grew and so did our capabilities to affect change. So far we have reinvested all profit in things we believe move the needle in the right direction. Some are direct donations, others are pure investments, others should probably be classified as "high-risk bets that might make things better, but not necessarily for us".
The fact that we retain 100% ownership in the company enables us to engage in strategic behavior that is unavailable to competitors who accept outside investment. All VCs have investment horizons. If we invited one onboard they would eventually want us to sell, or commit to handing out dividends.
We'd rather build some kind of institution. Even better if we can obsolete VPN services as a concept. Then we could move on to other problems. It's not like there's a shortage. We have explored the idea of moving our shares to a foundation. Unfortunately that is an action that can't be undone. It's kind of the point, but by retaining the shares we retain maximum strategic flexibility.
Edit: I don't identify as a social entrepreneur, but thought you might enjoy the story anyway, as we're also sort of optimizing for impact. Whatever that means.