Eric Ries

Three simple words.

that that's something that can be lost.

And listen, Google's a great company.

I mean, to say Google's like, they're not even the close to the worst of the worst, okay?

But the fact that it's so publicly documented, that despite every apparent best intention that I can find, they nonetheless felt this loss.

You can see it in these essays.

People write about this feeling that something mysterious was going on, that something vital was being lost, but they couldn't even say who was causing the loss.

And that feeling of helplessness, of confusion, of mystery characterizes almost everyone I know who's trying to do anything good in business today.

Employees, customers, I mean, I keep telling this story about the economist John Kay, I think is the one I first heard it from, who went into a restaurant, one of his favorite restaurants, took one bite and told his friend,

I bet this restaurant's been taken over by private equity.

I can taste it.

And he looked up his phone and it had, and so many people, I probably had a dozen people come up to me after giving this, saying this story and telling me they know what restaurant I'm talking about.

And it's, they've made 12 different restaurants.

It could be 12 different restaurants.

It's like, it's an app, which we all feel is happening.

But it's not just private equity, right?

The simple answer is yes.

And most people don't believe it.

Like we're so cynical and we're so been told that the way things are is the way that things have to be for natural law reasons.

that we actually often ignore the evidence that this is true, that's like staring us in the face.