I'm Eric Ries (The Lean Startup) and Author of New Book "Incorruptible" - AMA

It will be interesting to see how many of those companies remain "incorruptible". Your new book seems a bit like a sequel to Jim Collins's 2001 book Good to Great. Several of the "great" companies including Circuit City, Fannie Mae, and Wells Fargo later ran into serious problems. And from an investor perspective, as a group they have underperformed the S&P 500.https://www.harpercollins.com/products/good-to-great-jim-col... > And from an investor perspective, as a group they have underperformed the S&P 500.This should be kind of obvious -- if they are avoiding doing awful things in the name of money, then they are leaving something on the table. You can't have your cake and eat it too. This is why the real solution is some kind of governance/regulation, because otherwise the market incentivizes being awful. well, eric's book tries to make the point that these good companies DO overperform the market. after reading the book this past week, im not convinced. feels like heavy selection bias. yeah, this is very much the challenge with writing any kind of business book: the book is frozen in time yet the companies grow and change. I tried really really hard not to put any company up on a pedestal, or even make any forward-looking predictions, but merely to show how each company illustrates a specific concept from the book. What type of software businesses survive and thrive in the era of AGI? Which ones get wiped out? Is there any moat in the era of AGI? I haven't read the new book yet, but I'd be interested in your take on Disney's trajectory over the last, say, 2 decades. It seems to have strayed pretty far from Walt's original vision, largely due to the actions of Bob Iger. He took what used to be a company that was fueled by creativity and turned it into a machine that strip mines IP and extracts value. Iger purchased IP (Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Fox) as a risk mitigation strategy since you get an established brand you can exploit on day 1. But in doing so he killed the soul of Disney, which was built on big creative bets (literally sell the car to make a movie, mortgage the house to build a park).

I recently had the chance to meet Abigail Disney, who has been a very vocal critic of what's happened to her grandfather's ethos. It sounds quite sad. Just dropping in to thank you for writing this book and raising awareness around it. A lot of builders are really disillusioned by how "corruptible" the tech industry has been.I wrote a blog post called "Revenue Model is More Important than Culture" (it made the #1 spot on HackerNews a few years ago) arguing that the way to avoid that corruption is by making sure the business model is immune to it, but having read your thoughts, I'd say your argument (structure being the dominant term) is even stronger. I wish I had read that blog post because that is one of the chapters in the new book. I actually think that the phrase "mission-driven" for most companies is a total lie. They are at best "mission-hopeful". In fact, I tried to create a new term for the work that is required: the management system, leadership techniques, and structural elements that are required to 100% align the business model with the mission. I call it "mission drive," as if it was an engine you could install and maintain. Any thoughts on bootstrapping a SaaS in the AI era? Is it more manageable because a single person can leverage more? Or more difficult because of increased resource needs and customer demands? And also how that factors into starting an "incorruptible" company today. Any time you have a technological change, it's kind of confusing to figure out how it can apply to entrepreneurs. On the one hand, it makes it so much easier to create a new MVP, makes it easier to create distribution and to get connected to customers, to do many of the techniques that lean startup demands. On the other hand, that same capability is now in the hands of thousands or even millions of other people, including other people creating startups to compete with you and the incumbents you're trying to disrupt. It's always an open question whether the so-called attacker's advantage will overcome the so-called defender's advantage with any given technology.In terms of the thesis of Incorruptible, though, I do think that LLMs in particular should be really, really advantageous for managers and leaders who want to create alignment and coherence within their own company.

If there's anything that LLMs are extremely good at, it's summarization. So much of the modern leadership challenge is simply figuring out the answer to the question: what is my organization actually doing right now? That's a summarizing problem. You frame corruption as financial gravity, fixable by governance design at the firm level. But the dollar's strength has been reinforced for fifty years by oil trading in dollars. Tying our money to a conflict asset implicated in war, pollution, and enormous suffering. Can any company be incorruptible inside a monetary system that isn't? > how a handful of companies (like Costco[..]) have successfully been structured to resist gravity"I came to (Jim Sinegal) once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty," Jelineck recalled[..]. "We are losing our rear ends.’ And he said, ‘If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you."That's not structure, that's leadership. They were about to change the price, but one guy at the top with authority and an opinion said no. You could say "it's structure" that there was one guy at the top with authority, but it still depends on him having the right opinion. You need both a good structure and an unwaveringly idealistic (and correct) leader. > That's not structure, that's leadership. [...] one guy at the top [...] said no.Yeah, there's no rule structure that can't be skirted and subverted by new owners with different objectives. The most resilient way to preserve your values is to: Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Teach them to your children and to your children's children. Your successors don't need to be your literal children, but if you turn your company over to "strangers with money" you can't be surprised when they do what they want with their new possession. For those that want to go deeper with _Incorruptible_, I've spent the past few months doing hundreds of interviews and events discussing its various themes and topics.

I'm having Claude Code summarize this progress along the way at https://howisincorruptiblegoing.com/You can also see the various accolades, reviews, and awards that it's accumulated so far. As an author, I'm navigating SO many angry people who are enraged at the idea of using AI tools in writing. How are you managing that? As the old joke goes, "Very, very carefully."I used AI extensively in the research, editing, and promotion phases of creating the book (and even shared screen with a few podcast hosts who wanted to see the solveit platform from Answer.AI up close). To be clear, I never let the AI write for me; I am not a fan of "vibe creating" of any kind. Instead, I tried to use the AI to improve my own skills so that the final artifact was better than it would have been before.I know people are up in arms about this right now, but shouldn't at least some of blame for that fall on the tech industry itself, for how these tools are designed, promoted, and sold? I think in the long run, society will achieve a more healthy equilibrium. But in the meantime, it's gonna be a bit rocky. "I won't pretend I have this all figured out, but Iive probably spent more time than is healthy on the "why do good companies go bad" question."Those companies, Costco, Patagonia, Novo, were founded by "good" peopleThese people had legitimate business models, not something like "data collection from/about computer users, surveillance of computer users and online ad services"Q. What makes a "good" companyA. "Good" people, for starters"There's a darkness in our industry [what "industry"?] that we often don't talk about."Look in the mirror. Maybe the "darkness" is youYou will keep searching for a different answer but you won't find it Is it realistic to make organizations that stay on mission long after the founder is gone?I listened to a podcast interview you did where you talked positively about the Novo Nordisk Foundation as a successful governance story, but when I think of long lived foundations, I think of the Ford Foundation and the Hewlet Foundation that have significantly drifted from the founders' visions despite being non-profits.

Many people think it is better for foundations to spend down all their resources before the founder is gone to prevent this drift and loss of efficacy.Have you done any studies of what made long lived foundations drift on their mission despite no profit incentive? Coming from the blockchain space, but wanting to build something with bright patterns, while also using DLT and crypto, has been painful, to say the least.I would like to know how best to stand out from the toxic, finance-driven world that is defi and crypto generally, without getting rolled in with all the clowns. Of course, I know that clear messaging and verifiable, evidence-driven claims are good, but I am thinking about the more abstract, strategic side to things, which I still feel under-prepared for. I've read The Lean Startup during undergrad and it was a bible to me at the time, thank you for your work, you got me into startup culture in a place where everyone else did not support of it.One question I have for you is on finances, I think that still remains an afterthought in startup hustle culture, and perhaps even by design, I feel like the system is designed so that VCs keep winning and founders rarely get the exit they deserve. What is your take on that? > the system is designed so that VCs keep winningThe way around that is to not take VC money. There are some (not many) startups that got to unicorn status by bootstrapping and not taking outside money. It's harder, yes, but in a way a more pure effort. Thank you for saying that. When I wrote that book, people like you were very much in my mind at the time. I'm really glad to hear you found it useful, even if the people around you didn't understand or support what you were trying to do.You're quite right. There are many, many problems with the current "best practices" including that many founders wind up with nothing even if the organization succeeds. In fact, one study I cite in the book found that something like 80% of founders of venture-backed companies will no longer be CEO even three years after an IPO. When starting a company, perhaps it’s best to consider something you love doing so much that staying there and nurturing the business is more important than exiting.That and, don’t accept money from strangers. :)