Have you considered a life without principles?
Values are tenets that guide your behavior and serve as a yardstick for measuring your level of overall achievement in life. Humans have applauded and encouraged moral values and ethical behavior from other humans since the dawn of humanity.
The above is no different for business ethics.
In the startup industry, we discuss
- Value proposition,
- Value chain, and
- Valuation of the business
But less talked about are the values and ethics followed by the stakeholders of the business
There are several ways to determine a new business’s market value, but the values of the people running it are rarely taken into account. The “product as a horse” or “founders as a jockey” of the firm should be taken into consideration when deciding whether the company is investible, as per the evaluation matrix employed by VC investors.
The standards for evaluation should not be scarce of ethical values.
Even successful brands need to commit to an ethical purpose if they want to flourish moving forward. In this thriving, customer-driven economy, everyone is at risk. Whether you’re Apple, Nike, or Coke, you need to carefully align your company’s principles with your success vision if you want to maintain its value, relevance, and vitality.
As in recent times, we have heard of a few instances when expansion at all costs was exploited to achieve unicorn status, which resulted in financial fraud due to bad governance and persistently immoral activities. These events seriously harm the ecosystem as well as investor trust.
Profitability and business ethics go hand in hand. A company that strives to dominate its market area and has a solid ethical base stands to win a lot. Even if a company has a history of producing tremendous profits, being unethical will cause it to collapse.
Values are meant to strengthen and enhance relationships.
In line of which, we have established three core values at Auxano: “Be Entrepreneur, Be Accountable, and Be Focused.” These values always encourage advancement keeping in mind ethical standards, preserving the meaning of Auxano — “driving growth” for its clients as well as its valued team and investors. In accordance with one of our evaluation practices, we evaluate the founder pedigree on an educational, professional, and emotional level.
Approach
Everyone has important principles in their life that must be acknowledged and upheld in order to succeed in both commercial and personal affairs.
Turn to valuation when values are in use.
Build products around the belief — “That they can be passed to the next generation without them degrading” and the sky would be your limit.
Author:
Rakesh Rana
