Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.Brought to you by* Land PM Job - 12-week experience to master getting a PM job* Jira Product Discovery - Plan with purpose, ship with confidence* Amplitude - The market-leader in product analytics* Bolt - Ship AI-powered products 10x faster* Product Faculty - Get $550 off their #1 AI PM Certification with code AAKASH550C7----Today’s episodeEvery startup founder picks up Zero to One. Reads the chapter on Delaware C-Corps. Files the paperwork. Moves on.That paperwork will outlast every product decision they ever make.I sat down with Eric Ries, the man who created Build, Measure, Learn. NYT bestselling author of The Lean Startup. Co-founder of Answer.AI with Jeremy Howard. Founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange. Dario Amodei called him before Anthropic’s seed round.His new book Incorruptible drops May 26. It is the blueprint for building a company that the financial system cannot capture.He also demoed live how he wrote the book using Solve It, the AI platform from Answer.AI. Not prompting. Not generating. Editing the model’s responses directly.If you are building anything you want to outlast the next funding round, this is the one episode to watch.Check out the episode on Apple Podcast and Spotify.If you want access to my AI tool stack, grab Aakash’s bundle.----Key Takeaways:1. Governance has four dimensions - Compliance is table stakes. Purpose, coherence, and integrity are the three most boards ignore. Companies that nail all four outperform the market over decades.2. Financial gravity destroys good companies - The unconscious reflex to comply with the values of those who have more than you. Jim Senegal called it heroin. You compromise once and it gets baked into the forecast.3. Costco's governance fortress is the blueprint - Staggered board terms, poison pills, fiduciary hierarchy. $10K at the Costco IPO is worth $8.7M today versus $151K in the S&P 500.4. Stone does not enforce itself - Johnson & Johnson carved values into limestone. Asbestos ended up in the baby powder. $10B settlement. Structure protects ethos but does not create it.5. Mission lock vehicles create 6x survival - A separate entity holding the for-profit board accountable. Novo Nordisk, IKEA, Patagonia, Hershey, Vanguard all use this structure. 60% survival to year 50 versus 10%.6. Anthropic's LTBT took two years to defend - AI safety experts appoint board seats. The trust gains power as the company hits milestones. Structural protection is why Anthropic can afford to be courageous.7. Public Benefit Corporations write mission into the charter - Legal permission to pursue purpose over shareholder value. Not the B-Corp certification sticker. A legal structure.8. LLMs are conformity machines - They produce the center of the outcome distribution. For competitive advantage you must change how you use AI.9. Solve It enables human-in-the-loop writing - Edit the model's responses directly. 600 test readers, 10K structured comments, Python scripts organizing feedback per chapter.10. Build Measure Learn works at any timescale - Not about absolute speed. Relative velocity versus your industry convention. The AI labs that release more quickly create decisive trust advantages.----Where to find Eric Ries* LinkedIn* Incorruptible* Answer.AI / Solve It* Long-Term Stock Exchange* Lean Startup----Related contentPodcasts:* AI Product Strategy with Aman Khan* The Marty Cagan Episode on Product Management* How to Succeed as a Head of Growth with Dan OlsenNewsletters:* AI product strategy in 2026* How Cursor grows* PLG in 2026----PS. Please subscribe on YouTube and follow on Apple & Spotify. It helps!If you want to advertise, email productgrowthppp at gmail. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.