How Generosity Built Tech Giants

Dalton Caldwell says a tool creates value when it helps customers earn or save more than it costs. He points to Google Ads, where businesses could buy clicks and earn more from the resulting sales, and Microsoft Office, which made some workers 10 to 100 times more productive.

Michael Seibel and Caldwell warn against building something mainly because it looks like a product investors might fund. Caldwell also describes founders' fear of becoming consultants: customizing for one customer may seem hard to scale. But early on, founders often lack deep knowledge of customers' work and how their businesses make money; Google's mortgage refinancing advertisers are one example of a customer group its founders had to understand.

Seibel recalls that Twitch's team learned what streamers needed by talking with them and building for them. Caldwell's advice is to work closely with some early customers, even if initial solutions do not generalize, so founders can learn which needs and economic drivers matter across a wider market. He says founders can ask customers how a product might help them make more money.

Caldwell says a cold email asking for 20 minutes of a customer's time gives little in return. He describes a company that reviewed a prospect's onboarding flow and sent advice on improving it; prospects found the feedback useful and were then more willing to talk. That kind of hands-on help does not scale, but it can help with early outreach and the first ten customers.

Caldwell connects the idea of giving value first to the history of computing, where software was often provided with hardware and many foundational tools were made freely available. He names GCC, Linux, web browser technologies, and SQLite, and notes that Android depends on Linux. He argues that products can leave customers substantial value while still creating economic value for their builders, provided they solve a real customer problem.