Came across a tweet this week by @opensrcdefense:
At the last company I started I spent a lot of time at startup incubator programs and one of the typical first exercises they have you do is to come up with your company’s “Mission Statement”. It’s often used on your decks that you present to potential investors … but in my experience, it’s also often skipped over. It tends to feel like an insincere requirement that really just means: “yeah, yeah, sounds cool, but really, explode your growth, exit, and make us money. (wink)”
But one thing that’s unique about Infinite Armory and why I’ve undertaken the task to build it is I did start with a mission other than growth this time. And it’s one reason I believe in its longevity. For too long now, we in the gun hobby have been seen as pariahs by the tech industry. I don’t think it’s personal, it’s just tech companies managing risk (which OSD has written plenty about) … but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel personal.
Six years ago I started a small side project selling PVC patches modeled after rifles used by the U.S. military. I was surprised when I went to advertise these harmless little patches on social media, at just how quickly companies like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc… would ban my ads and links off their platform for violating their “weapons policies”. A 3″ piece of rubber with some velcro backing is quite nefarious it turns out. But it did drive the point home to me that if social media companies were going to be that aggressive at suppressing firearms content on their platform, what hope could we possibly ever have as a community of freely exchanging legal parts, accessories, kit … and even serialized guns (legally) on their platforms?
I don’t have some beautiful, succinct, official “Mission Statement” for Infinite Armory just yet. But this concept of “stewardship” that OSD mentions has been on my mind a lot lately. There is going to be a tremendous amount of trust placed in Infinite Armory by people who chose to conduct transactions with it. Doing our best to prevent fraud, protecting people’s privacy, keeping systems reliable, ensuring we’re knowledgeable in the law and following the rules in order to not put people at risk, innovating with technology over time, etc… Prioritizing those things over growth is going to be a key part of that mission and IA’s story.