AGAINST the Grain

Building an Ethical Tech Company in a Data-Hungry World

We had a vision, and it was truly ambitious!

Quite quickly, we realised we couldn't just do an 'upgrade'.

No, this task would need a 'total rebuild', and we would have to go back to basics.

Were we phased by the task? Not in the slightest.

A way to come up with a good business idea is to look at an everyday industry and write down your assumptions of how you think that industry works or what you hate about the industry.

Then write down the opposite of those assumptions/problems.

What that gives you is then another way of operating an industry differently. 

For example, let’s look at a pension company:

Assumptions are:

• You have to be 18 to pay into one

• You can’t collect until you are 65

• You have to pay a minimum amount

Reverse of that is:

• You can pay in from the day you are born (or your parents can)

• You can collect at any age

• You can start with a penny

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So starting with a clean sheet of paper, we wrote down all the problems with current tech models, from privacy to advertisement, pop-ups to responsibility (or more to the point, lack of it!).

Very soon, we had eight initial issues.

Then we made a list of the direct opposite of those issues, and this formed the basic requirements we needed to start the Hyam Institute.

It was 'rocket surgery' (as a friend used to say).

It was just going back to basics, pure and simple.