‘We are not here for the money’: Founders’ manifestos

Abstract

In April 2004, prior to Google’s flotation in the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) Stock Market, the company filed its S-1 Registration Statement. In addition to financial details, Google’s founders published a personal letter to the company’s potential investors in which they discussed procedural issues as well as philosophical ones. Since then, the founders of three other Internet companies – Groupon, Zynga and Facebook – have published similar manifestos in their S-1 statements. This first attempt to explore these manifestos uncovers how they function as a political and persuasive discourse. Using rhetorical analysis, this study identifies shared rhetorical strategies aimed at constructing a new business discourse. The founders’ efforts are important not only because they are counterintuitive to traditional business practices, but also because they signal the realization of an alternate business discourse that is informed by and based upon a new managerial style and Web 2.0 cultural values.