Eric Ries

Yeah, what's sad about it is we've built an economy where people are routinely rewarded for cutting costs, but never held accountable for the downstream brand and quality consequences of that.

So like on the balance sheet, getting rid of the cookie is immediate ROI positive.

No, you got it right.

How is it possible that the capital structure of a company has a flavor?

You can literally taste it.

Because notice how when you said that Private Egg took over your hotel, we're all ready to give you condolences.

In theory, you might be like, well, having those resources made it better.

That's great.

No, no one ever feels that way.

And everywhere I go, I've been doing this book tour on the new book.

People are coming up to me to be like, I know that story.

Yes, that happened to me.

And they've named like 20 different restaurants to me, hotels, like so many service products where, and again, it's not about private equity per se.

It's that we've built this pervasive force that is just dragging companies down.

So if we're going to now get to the governance question, and I know for founders listening, it's like, oh God, governance, so boring.

But like, as I say in the book, if you don't get the governance of a company right, no other decision you make will matter in the long run because you won't be the one making it.

So we have to figure out how do we create that incredible alignment.

You've seen it in mission-driven companies where everyone's on the same page.

How do we protect that special thing from outside pressure?

And when you put those two things together, we can create what I call mission-controlled companies that cannot be corrupted by this temptation.