My father was the epitome of the liberal individual, a splendid irony for a lifelong Marxist. To make a living, he had to lease his labor to the boss of a steel plant in Eleusis. But during every lunch break he wandered blissfully in the open-air backyard of the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis, where he luxuriated in the discovery of ancient steles full of clues that antiquity’s technologists were more advanced than previously thought.

Following his return home, at just after 5 p.m. every day, and a late siesta, he would emerge ready to share in our family life and to write up his findings in academic articles and books. His life at the factory was, in short, neatly separated from his personal life.

It reflected a time when even leftists like us thought that, if nothing else, capitalism had granted us sovereignty over ourselves, albeit within limits. However hard one worked for the boss, one could at least fence off a portion of one’s life and, within that fence, remain autonomous, self-determining, free. We knew that only the rich were truly free to choose, that the poor were mostly free to lose, and that the worst slavery was that of anyone who had learned to love their chains. Still, we appreciated the limited self-ownership we had.

Young people today have been denied even this small mercy. From the moment they take their first steps, they are taught implicitly to see themselves as a brand, yet one that will be judged according to its perceived authenticity. (And that includes potential employers: “No one will offer me a job,” a graduate told me once “until I have discovered my true self.”) Marketing an identity in today’s online society is not optional. Curating their personal lives has become some of the most important work young people do.

Before posting any image, uploading any video, reviewing any movie, sharing any photograph or tweet, they must be mindful of whom their choice will please or alienate. They must somehow work out which of their potential “true selves” will be found most attractive, continually testing their opinions against their notion of what the average opinion among online opinion-makers might be. Because every experience can be captured and shared, they are continually consumed by the question of whether to do so. And even if no opportunity actually exists for sharing the experience, that opportunity can readily be imagined, and will be. Every choice, witnessed or otherwise, becomes an act in the careful construction of an identity.

One need not be a leftist to see that the right to a bit of time each day when one is not for sale has all but vanished. The irony is that the liberal individual was snuffed out neither by fascist brownshirts nor by Stalinist commissars. It was killed off when a new form of capital began to instruct youngsters to do that most liberal of things: be yourself. Of all the behavioral modifications that what I call cloud capitalhas engineered and monetized, this one is surely its overarching and crowning achievement.

Possessive individualism was always detrimental to mental health. The techno-feudal society that cloud capital is fashioning made things infinitely worse when it demolished the fence that provided the liberal individual with a refuge from the labor market. Cloud capital has shattered the individual into fragments of data, an identity comprising choices expressed by clicks, which its algorithms are able to manipulate in ways no human mind can grasp. It has produced individuals who are not so much possessive as possessed, or rather persons incapable of self-possession. It has diminished our capacity to focus by co-opting our attention.

We have not become weak-willed. No, our focus has been hijacked by a new ruling class. And because the algorithms embedded in cloud capital are known to reinforce patriarchy, invidious stereotypes, and pre-existing oppression, the most vulnerable – girls, the mentally ill, the marginalized, and the poor – suffer the most.

If fascism taught us anything, it is our susceptibility to demonizing stereotypes and the ugly attraction (and potency) of emotions like righteousness, fear, envy, and loathing that they arouse in us. In our contemporary social reality, the cloud brings us face to face with the feared and loathed “other.” And because online violence seems bloodless and anodyne, we are more likely to respond to this “other” with taunting, demeaning language and bile. Bigotry is techno-feudalism’s emotional compensation for the frustrations and anxieties we experience in relation to identity and focus.

Comment moderators and hate-speech regulation can’t stop this brutalization because it is intrinsic to cloud capital, whose algorithms optimize for the cloud rents that flow more copiously toward Big Tech’s owners from hatred and discontent. Regulators cannot regulate artificial-intelligence-driven algorithms that even their authors cannot understand. For liberty to have a chance, cloud capital needs to be socialized.

My father believed that finding something timelessly beautiful to focus on, as he did while wondering among the relics of Greek antiquity, is our only defense from the demons circling our soul. I have tried to practice this over the years in my own way. But in the face of techno-feudalism, acting alone, isolated, as liberal individuals will not get us very far. Cutting ourselves off from the internet, switching off our phones, and using cash instead of plastic is no solution. Unless we band together, we will never civilize or socialize cloud capital – and never reclaim our own minds from its grip.

And herein lies the greatest contradiction: Only a comprehensive reconfiguration of property rights over the increasingly cloud-based instruments of production, distribution, collaboration, and communication can rescue the foundational liberal idea of liberty as self-ownership will require. Reviving the liberal individual thus requires precisely what liberals detest: a new revolution.

Project Syndicate

The pursuit of venture capital can distort a company's growth trajectory. During the boom period from 2010 to 2021, many startups used venture capital to finance loss-making rapid growth – knowing the market for initial public offerings would enrich the investors and founders before the startup burned through its cash. 

In 2022, all that ended. The plunge in venture capital investment – down 35 percent in 2022, according to Crunchbase – revealed the perils of unbridled growth. CB Insights found that 47 percent of startup failures in 2022 were due to a lack of financing (in 2021 that percentage was a mere 24.) 

Many startups ignored the advice I gave in Scaling Your Startup: don't skip the second stage of scaling – Building a Scalable Business Model – in which you redesign your business processes to grow profitably when you take on more capital in the third stage – Sprinting to Liquidity. 

One company that did not skip that second stage is Cupertino, Calif.-based Splashtop, a service that lets businesses provide employees with fast, simple and secure remote tech support.

With more than 30 million users and 250,000 business customers, Splashtop was valued at over $1 billion in 2021 when it raised $60 million in capital. 

Here are five takeaways for business leaders from Splashtop's sustained success. 

1. Change your product as technology leaps forward

Business leaders should recognize that it is OK to launch a product that fails to scale as long as they cut their losses quickly and repeat the process until they have a product that catches on. 

Splashtop's product mix has changed several times in the last 16 years. As Mark Lee, Splashtop CEO, told me in a March 24 interview, the company went through many such pivots: Building a browser for netbooks, offering software to speed up the time for a Windows PC to boot up, and enabling consumers to access PCs from their iPhones. 

Ultimately, Splashtop pivoted to its current business – building software for remote IT support. 

2. Make happy customers your most effective sales force

To keep paying the bills during the search for a fit between their product and market needs, business leaders must run a tight ship. 

To do that, Splashtop sells while controlling sales expense by providing such a great user experience that customers tell their friends.

"To create customers who are excited to share our product with friends we deliver a wow user experience. They swipe their credit cards to buy. Our products have reliability and performance and our customers tell other people," Lee said. 

3. Use profits to finance your growth

If you have capital when your competitors are running out, you may be able to profit from the misfortune of poorly managed rivals. 

Splashtop did this by running a cash flow-generating business. As Lee told me, "We grew 200 percent in 2020 and raised $65 million in 2021 but we haven't spent it.

We make $10 million in cash flow a year. For many years, we had to bootstrap so we had to be efficient. Other companies are laying off people now to reduce their costs. We are looking at possible partnerships with some of them." 

4. Succeed as a big, happy family

Happy employees help your business to get and keep customers. 

To do that, Splashtop thinks of itself as a happy family built on trust. Lee explained: "We are like a family. We all graduated from MIT and have worked together for 30 years. We are still together – we have friendship and tightness. We believe that happy employees make happy customers." 

Building trust is the foundation for keeping customers and employees happy. "If people trust you, they buy more. We offer the best value, reliability, a good user experience, response to a customer question within a minute – faster than one to two days for the competition," he said. 

5. Build, partner or acquire to keep customers buying

Leaders must invest to keep their customers buying over time. 

Splashtop does this by encouraging customers to use its product well. "We guide users to try new features. That makes the product stickier," Lee said.

The company builds new products when it finds customer pain points where Splashtop can rapidly deliver a much better user experience. 

Splashtop recently acquired San Francisco-based Foxpass, a service that secures remote network access using identify management. Foxpass passed three tests: 

• Its product satisfies an important unmet customer need.
• Its customer-centric culture fits well with Splashtop's.
• Customers give its products high marks.

These five things can help your company sustain rapid, profitable growth.

Inc