Shane Parrish

Winning creates enemies.

The people who can't beat you in the market will try to beat you in court, in the press, in the halls of government.

Success doesn't end the fight.

It changes the arena.

But the war also forced a decision on the butt faces, one that they had resisted for years.

Nike needed a war chest.

It needed resources to survive whatever came next.

The company that had been built on a handshake and loyalty was about to go public.

On December 2nd, 1980, Nike went public at $22 a share.

By the end of its first day of trading, the company is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Phil Knight, the kid who borrowed $1,000 from his father to chase a crazy idea halfway around the world, is worth about $170 million on paper.

But he doesn't describe that day as a triumph.

He describes it as a kind of death.

The scrappy, trust-based company he'd built was now a public corporation.

The buttfaces would answer to analysts.

He gathered his original team, the misfits who'd built this thing with him, and they sat together in silence.

They'd won.

They'd actually won, but something was ending too.

Phil Knight writes, "'I wanted to build something that would last, but I also wanted to build something that would stay small enough to feel like family.

You can't have both.'"