Binder
The long game
McKinsey’s data is clear: companies executing long-term approaches generate 47% higher revenue growth and 36% more earnings over 10 years versus short-term focused peers. That’s not a small delta.
The pressure against this is real and relentless. Quarterly earnings. PE exit timelines. Optimize for the metric. Frank Slootman’s “we compensated the ServiceNow exec team on just one metric” was singleness of purpose — not short-termism. But the compression toward short-term is structural in the PE model, structural in public markets, structural in how most leadership is measured.
The Japanese contrast
US M&A in 2019 was ten times Japan’s in dollar terms. The S&P 500 average company lifespan is 15 years. The Japanese concept “hosoku nagaku” — thin and long — treats stable longevity as the actual goal, not as a constraint on the real goal. 21,000 Japanese companies over 100 years old. They’re not optimizing for the exit. They’re optimizing for the continuation.
The Western version
The Constellation Software model. Mark Leonard built a $95B empire through 600+ acquisitions. Decentralized. Minimal debt. No forced exits. Hold forever. 34% annualized returns since IPO. The permanent capital model — 30-year funds, no forced exit — is an explicit rejection of the flip-in-five-years playbook.
What it means in PM
Products built for the current quarter look different from products built for the next decade. The former optimizes for demos and announcements. The latter invests in the platform, the architecture, the feedback loop. Platform work feels like cost when you’re staring down the cash gun. It isn’t. It’s the single largest long-term value driver in software.
Bending Spoons has never sold a company. Constellation has never sold a company. Both are outperforming the PE firms that build to sell. The short game is competed. The long game is mostly empty.