Doing the right thing or doing things right?

When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.——Nietzsche

pic from internet

Entrepreneurship Philosophy

This class, art entrepreneurship, is like an alarm, warning me every single day that doing the right thing is the most important thing. As my former posts notes, when we are building the website which puts artists on the center, aiming at curating connections for artists. Every time when we make changes, we think back our value propositions.

I am from Shanghai, a place full of plastic dreams. In one night, hundreds of startups get their venture capital, and hundreds of companies announce that they are bankrupted. When I was in Shanghai running my little app, several investors and corporations came to me to discuss possibilities. At that time, I was one of the pioneers who focused on art social media in Chinese market. But I was young dumb and didn’t care much about the app’s possibilities. Now, I appreciate the younger and dumber me that I just happened to catch the right timing in the market, but I didn’t have a clear values about the app at that time. 

Think about that, a young curator who is planning an exhibition, and her key value for this exhibition are 1)social practice, 2) putting artists on the center, 3)engagement. Then, she went to a corporation foundation to seek the financial support. She got feedbacks about 1)what was the gain for their branding? 2)if it was about social practice, they might take the risk of the government side. It is not a good deal overall unless she changes the value propositions, and also puts their social benefit but not the exhibition on the first place. Yes, this is the conversation happened between me and a former corporation partner. Following their rules can help me financially, but following my values can help me do the right thing..

The website progress 

This week, we worked together for our revenues and set up our three year projection. We have researched every number in our projection. I appreciate to our class’s knowledge that 1) every number should be realistic, 2) it’s usual that the first year might not benefit financially. The process is tough, but it helps us control the uncertainties and risks. When we are building the website, the problem is that if we charge more from artists or focus on buyers, honestly, we can have better revenues. But it is against our value propositions, so, “doing the right thing” is one of the main power which helps the website to be what it is today…