Launching today
Incorruptible by Eric Ries
Why good companies go bad and how great companies stay great
187 followers
Why good companies go bad and how great companies stay great
187 followers
Instant NY Times bestseller from Eric Ries, creator of The Lean Startup. Incorruptible reveals the structural forces ("financial gravity") that pull great companies away from their founding purpose, and the governance design that lets the best ones resist it. The book offers the blueprint for organizations that can grow, prosper, and endure without losing their soul. 💬 Launch AMA with Eric 📘 Free implementation guide for Product Hunt incorruptible.co/resources/guide-for-ph
Incorruptible by Eric Ries
Hey Product Hunt 👋
Two weeks ago I published a new bestselling book. While The Lean Startup helps entrepreneurs create valuable organizations, Incorruptible covers why and how to protect them.
I wanted to run a launch here because Product Hunt's audience (founders, operators, people who actually build things) is exactly who the book is for. What's most exciting to me is the emotional response and the early adopters already applying these protections to their companies.
Corruption in companies almost never starts with bad people. It's structural. There's a gravitational pull toward extraction, toward the next quarter, toward "best practices" that quietly hollow you out. Unless you design against it, it wins. The book is about how the best companies (Costco, Patagonia, Novo Nordisk, Cloudflare, Anthropic) build what I call a governance fortress.
For anyone who wants to take the frameworks further, I'm sharing the implementation guide free with Product Hunt folks at www.incorruptible.co/resources/g.... It's the workshop version, in writing.
I'll be in the comments all day. Ask me anything about financial gravity, mission-controlled companies, why I think a lot of startup advice (including some of my own) needs an update for the AI era, or where you're seeing the patterns in companies you know.
Genuinely excited for this discussion.
Eric
Incorruptible by Eric Ries
@dani_mashael one of the most important ideas in the book is that "it's always too early until it's too late." I personally think companies, whenever possible, should reserve the option to install mission-protective provisions into the legal documents from as early an age as possible. Notice that investors do this routinely and without needing to explain or defend themselves. Why shouldn't the mission get the same consideration?
Loving this book. Exactly what is needed right now - extractive capitalism is bleeding us dry. Is there a point in time where the scales tipped to the short-termism? Also, are there examples where a government has intervened to rebalance?
Incorruptible by Eric Ries
@stphnmrrs it's confusing because both of these things are true:
this problem has been going on a long time (I give examples in the book going back >200 years)
this problem has gotten a lot worse recently
I think one of the key mistakes was the shift to "shareholder primacy" a few decades ago. This shift is, fortunately, young enough that it's still quite easily reversible, if we will it.
The recent trend to allow companies to incorporate as "public benefit corps" in states like Delaware is an example of this rebalancing that you describe. We have to deal with the fact that many governments have been captured by the interests of the wealthy and especially of investors, which makes them less likely to want to do this rebalancing. But this, too, can be resisted, if we will it.
@ericries Thanks. Your appearance on Lenny's podcast is packed with great stuff. If you're still doing podcasts around the book, I'd love to talk to you...
Product Hunt
Congrats on the new book, @ericries. Does it get easier to write a book now that you've done it a few times?
Incorruptible by Eric Ries
@rrhoover Well, not really, because now I know how difficult it is, and so it's actually a bit daunting. In all seriousness, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Because I've been successful with my previous books, I have had the immense privilege of being able to afford a team to help me. I had researchers and editors and all kinds of allies.
On the other hand, I felt immense pressure to try and deliver something worthy of being seen by people as the successor to The Lean Startup. As many other artists have attested over the many generations, that pressure can be, in some ways, debilitating.
Raycast
@rrhoover @ericries how has AI changed the game for you? Are you finding that you're still writing prose yourself, or coaching an AI to write like you, or something else?
Incorruptible by Eric Ries
@rrhoover @chrismessina I used AI extensively during the research, editing, and promotion of the new book, but I never let the AI write for me. Instead, I tried to use it to upgrade my own understanding and skills, and then use those skills to make the final product better.
To give you just one example: I had more than 600 test readers read Incorruptible. They generated more than 10,000 individual comments. Now, I read every individual comment as it came in. It was basically my replacement for social media for months. When it came time to actually edit and revise the manuscript, it was extremely helpful to be able to use an LLM that could keep those comments in context for me that were relevant to the section or chapter that I was working on. I always had the voice of the customer accessible to me when I wanted it, but didn't find it overwhelming when I needed to find my own authorial voice.
Luckily, I had access to an early version of the solveit platform from Answer.AI (solve.it.com) which we also launched on PH :)
Best book ever.
How many of us just want to work with good people who find joy in finding ever more innovative new ways to bring more joy to others in our offerings?
That should be easy, right?
But it's not.
The corruption of the corporate world has driven me mad for decades.
I moved to Silicon Valley in 2009 because it seemed like the only hope for finding “Don’t be evil” companies who could sustain that vow.
This is the happiest I’ve been in a very long time.
I am so very grateful for this book and everyone who is working to create a world in which this vision might actually become real.
Incorruptible by Eric Ries
@alexryan thank you!
Thank you for this timely blueprint, Eric. When imagining what Incorruptible would detail, I thought of it as a brilliant epilogue to Built to Last, given the emphasis on how to build institutions that survive the test of time without losing their soul. But your mission transmission goes farther than core ideology. And its stunning. Would you say Incorruptible is as appropriate for the nascent entrepreneur, a person at ground-zero (me), as it is for the seasoned entrepreneur?
I’ve been spreading the word at London Tech Week, lots of minds to be convinced!
Incorruptible by Eric Ries
@david_knox1 thank you! I look forward to launching the UK edition formally in early September.