You Are Not A "Technology Company"

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

"We're a technology company that happens to be in Home Loans."

I heard a CEO say this on TV recently and I have to say, it irked me. Is that what his company did? They delivered ‘technology’? What the hell does that mean? Isn’t tech a means to an end, and not the end in and of itself? Does his company exist to knit together bits and bytes and provide hardware or software?

We’re a technology company.

No, you’re not. You exist in business to solve a problem - a customer-specific problem. And the better you understand the customer, the closer you are to empathizing with how they work and how they get things done, the better you’ll be able to create and maintain the solution they prefer. Your customer buys your offering because they believe you can solve their problem better than anyone else can. 

The fact that you utilize technology to deliver your offering is, in all actuality, incidental. Yes, it facilitates the solution, makes it more dynamic, provides convenience, but that isn’t why they’re buying from you. They’re buying, first and foremost, because you have the best means to solve their problem. If some dude on a donkey was able to deliver the same end result at the best value, I assure you they’d buy that.

So, let’s not confuse the means to the end with the value being delivered, the reason for your company’s existence. It is - and always will be - to solve the customer’s specific problem. That’s the start of it, and that’s the end of it.

(By the way, I’m fully aware of why he said it. He was trying to counter the fact that his stock was being valued as a mortgage company rather than a tech outfit, which have materially higher valuation multiples. The market, though, can tell.)