Eric Ries

And in order for this to work, people like to focus on the structures, of course, because they're very interesting.

But first, before you can adopt any alternative structure, you first have to build something worth protecting.

So the thing that makes these structures work is the internal alignment, the coherence that having a strong purpose-driven mission that is aligned with human flourishing makes possible.

If you don't have that, you will not be able to achieve institutional longevity.

And if you do, you will not sleep well at night based on what it comes.

So just like disclaimer, please don't skip over that.

But yeah, if you look at these companies that I just named,

They all have rejected the most important business idea of the 20th and 21st century, which is called shareholder privacy, which holds that the purpose of a corporation

purpose of an organization really, because this is metastasized out of the public markets and into nonprofits and governments, you see it everywhere now.

Its purpose is to create financial prosperity, to create financial returns for its investors or donors or for whoever.

Sometimes even not, we can't even say who it's for.

We're just like, well, we have to grow.

We have to get bigger.

We have to have more money.

A lot of nonprofits, schools fall into this trap all the time.

And the desperation to make money, first of all, makes you very weak because it makes you vulnerable to anyone who can threaten, credibly threaten to take your money away or offer you more money.

So these companies are easy to tempt.

They're basically addicts, do anything for a hit, which is really quite sad.

But worse than that, they have a governance structure that allows anybody who wants to take them over.

And what's so interesting is if you do the first thing I talked about, you build a company that accumulates this incredibly valuable asset.