Journal

Why we do not score on revenue

Revenue is the easiest number to read and the wrong one to aim at. What we score instead, and why that score is still being worked out.

Two rows of eight fields. On the left, one field fills with a tall stack of dots and the rest stay empty. On the right, every field gets a few dots. chase revenueeight different fieldschase rangeeight different fieldsone field, dug deepevery field, for real
Fig. 01The same effort spent two ways. On the left, one field dug deep, which is how a company earns most. On the right, a little real progress in every field, which is what we are after.

Every company can read its revenue. It arrives as one number, it is hard to argue with, and it is the first thing an outsider asks about. So it is worth saying clearly why Oscille does not aim at it.

What we want instead

We are trying to make the seed work for many kinds of company. A bakery, a software product, a factory. Not one kind of company done very well.

Revenue does not measure that. A company can earn a great deal by being excellent at one narrow thing, and the better it gets at that thing, the less it is able to do anything else. Aiming at revenue does not just fail to reward range. It rewards the opposite.

So the score we use is closer to the one nature uses. How many really different problems does the seed solve, and how little energy, material, and time does it use to do it? Money stands in for those costs only while money is how they are counted.

Two hard words

Two words in that score carry most of the difficulty.

Different means that being good in one field does not make you good in the other. Otherwise the count could be padded by solving the same problem under many names.

Solved means that people’s lives are better in a lasting way. Not that a product shipped, not that people used it a lot, not that they felt good for a moment. And the score is read from the field the seed is worst at, so it cannot quietly drop the fields it finds hard.

Neither of those is a clean number yet. Turning them into measures that are hard to game is the open research, and the founding document says so in the same breath as it defines them. That is why the score is written down as provisional, held by people, and changed only when outside results show it has drifted from reality.

Who gets to say it worked

One more rule sits under all of this. On its own, the seed cannot prove it succeeded. Only results it cannot influence count.

The Forge sends tools to the Field, the Field sends solutions to outside businesses, and validation flows back from those businesses to the seed. the forgeruns the seed on toolsthe fieldruns the seed on the worldoutside businessesnot running our seedtoolssolutionstool companiesvalidation, the only evidence that counts
Fig. 02Companies inside Oscille all run the same seed, so their success only suggests a tool is useful. Customers who run their own business their own way are the proof.

Revenue still matters. The company has to earn enough to keep going, and a tool that sells well is a good candidate for promotion. What selling can never do is promote it on its own. A paying customer is one form of the outside check the seed needs, not the goal it serves.