Yup. The hot dog story is in the book, and although it is a leadership story, that leadership is protected by a unique structure. Without which, I think it's very clear that it would be insufficient. You'll have to read the book to get al the details :)

And they say people on HN are all negative without having read the source material. What an exaggeration!

I hope you decide to read the book, and then come back and share whether it meets your expectations or defies them. The fact that you know about the "hack" of the two-entities solution indicates to me that you might well be surprised. There is a whole chapter on that "hack" and how (and why) to implement it.

I'd also ask you to re-examine whether the "objective incentives of the capitalistic market" are a law of nature (and thus, immutable) or something that is subject to human agency. If the latter, maybe we should exert ourselves towards changing it, rather than simply denigrating those who attempt to change it as naive or hopeless. In fact, I address this question directly in the later chapters of the book, including why (I think) people make comments like this to me.

So, in a way, you're in the book! I hope you'll check it out. But either way, thanks for stopping by and dropping a comment.

Right now, in most developed countries and especially in the United States, the defaults for corporate governance are set to a very extractive batch of so-called best practices. Organizations that want to have longevity, be mission-driven, and protect themselves have to proactively and at their own expense change away from the defaults. We could certainly imagine resetting those defaults to something more aligned to human flourishing.

All the mistakes, pretty much, are in the category of not fighting hard enough to protect the company or the founder. I tell a couple stories like this that still haunt me to this day, where I just feel like maybe, maybe, maybe if I had laid down across the tracks and made a big histrionic stink about it, maybe I could have gotten them to take it a little bit more seriously. On the other hand, maybe I just wasn't strong enough and didn't have the power, and there was nothing I could do. I'll never know.

I just did. I can't really imagine what I would want to write about next. I guess if I'm lucky enough to live long enough, we'll see.

So far, no, it's been a complete blackout from the major podcasts and major TV programs.

Of course that's true, but then don't forget that business model is a choice.

How do you think founders should feel about advertising then? Eg Ben Thompson always argues that consumer products where you want to maximize audience (eg to distribute fixed costs, benefit from scale, power a multi-sided flywheel) should prefer advertising, but obviously this forces a specific trajectory to the business.

If you run into a product with this type of dynamic is your advice just to run? Or is there strategy innovation we can do here to monetize businesses shaped like this to get a flywheel without ads?

Thank you. That's very nice of you to say.

Strongly endorse this way of thinking. If your local library doesn't have enough copies, I'd be glad to donate one.

I cover this topic extensively in the book. I think the fact that founders are increasingly turning to the political solution of "despotic emperor for life" tells you more about how bad standard governance is than anything else. I think vesting this power in a singular person or small group of people has all the downsides you'd expect from studying history. In the psychology literature, they literally have a name for "hubris syndrome." That is a mental illness that sets in when people have too much power.

In the book, I make the case for what I call constitutional governance, which I see as a third way in between standard governance and founder-controlled governance. I think it is both more effective and more long-term. After all, a company that is tied to the human lifespan has a built-in expiration date.

Thanks for reply Eric! I agree, and the problem is in the same way as with countries. Sure, you may have good leader and stability while the founder is alive - but once he goes, everything is ready to go up in flames.

The various gravitational forces within company eventually pull the company apart.

As you said, third way governance is really the key. At the end of the day founders in some cases should become chairman, to ensure that everything is functioning as set by constitution. Going into retirement and enjoying pension/stock options should be more common.