What a conversation! A full-circle moment for this show and its premise.
Authors and entrepreneurs Eric Ries and Kass Lazerow discuss the hidden costs of growth, the business case for purpose, and why the companies that endure may be the ones willing to leave money on the table.
What happens when doing well starts making it harder to do good?
It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with since starting Worthy for Thirty.
Most entrepreneurs start with good intentions. They point out a problem, create something valuable, attract customers and, if they’re fortunate, grow.
But somewhere between raising capital, answering to investors, growing operations, and pursuing an exit, the original mission can become negotiable.
The business becomes successful. But does its purpose survive?
That’s the tension I wanted to explore with Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and his latest New York Times bestseller, Incorruptible.
And it’s the exact reason why I invited past Worthy for Thirty guest Kass Lazerow to join me as guest co-host.
Why Kass? Because she’s lived the decisions Eric writes about.
Kass and her husband, Mike, co-founded Buddy Media, raised venture capital, scaled the business, and ultimately sold it to Salesforce in 2012 for ~$1B.
But when Kass previously joined Worthy for Thirty, what stayed with me wasn’t just the financial success. It was how intentionally she and Mike built a company around its people, shared ownership, culture, and giving back.
I experienced that culture firsthand during my time working alongside them from 2010-2012. Their commitment to Cycle for Survival helped shape my own belief that professional success and meaningful service can be mutually inclusive.
Kass didn’t just talk about doing good while doing well. She operationalized it. Everyone had a role in giving and being of service.
Today, as an investor and advisor to the next generation of founders, she’s confronting many of the same pressures from the other side of the table.
Eric brings the blueprint. Kass brings the lived experience of building, defending, and ultimately selling a company without treating its culture as expendable.
Together, they referenced several business questions that deserve more attention from both emerging startups and established companies.
1. Your mission statement is just words on a page. Your mission is reinforced by your decisions.
Eric argues that many founders don’t truly understand the corporate structures they’re creating.
A company might publicly promise to prioritize customers, employees or social impact while its governance and incentives obligate leadership toward maximizing financial returns.
That disconnect becomes particularly consequential when difficult decisions come up.
Eric cites the acquisition of pharmaceutical company Vectura by Philip Morris International as an example of what can occur when financial considerations conflict with an organization’s original purpose.
His broader thesis: Creating shareholder value and creating genuine economic value aren’t necessarily the same thing.
The business implication
For startups, mission should influence governance, ownership, and investor alignment, preempting any initial major conflict.
For established businesses, the challenge is evaluating whether executive compensation, board oversight, and financial incentives actually reinforce the values being communicated to customers and employees.
Ask yourself: If our most profitable opportunity conflicted with our stated mission, who would have the authority to say no?
2. Culture isn’t a cost center. It’s part of your moat.
Kass recalled a moment at Buddy Media when she proposed spending $1 million on an out-of-home, airport advertising campaign.
The board pushed back, wanting more salespeople instead.
Kass saw something different: an opportunity to establish Buddy Media as a category leader, attract talent and strengthen employee retention.
She says all three outcomes came to fruition.
Later, as Buddy Media grew to approximately 350 employees, Kass defended company traditions that investors questioned for financial reasons.
Her position was clear: these investments weren’t discretionary expenses. They helped define the company values.
Eric describes the opposing pressure as a kind of financial gravity: the constant temptation to cut costs, increase prices, and optimize short-term returns.
The business implication
Not every cultural investment is justified. But not every valuable investment produces an immediate, easily measurable ROI.
For startup founders, the lesson is to define the behaviors and experiences that make your organization distinct before rapid growth makes them harder to preserve.
For established companies, it’s worth examining whether cost-cutting initiatives are quietly removing the trust, institutional knowledge, and employee loyalty that contribute to long-term performance.
Reflection: What are we treating as an expense today that might actually be an investment in our future competitiveness?
3. Costco’s $1.50 hot dog is a prime example of brand differentiation.
One of my favorite examples from our conversation involved Costco. Who doesn’t love an impromptu Costco trip?
For decades, Costco has maintained its $1.50 hot dog and soda combination despite enormous opportunities to increase the price. Inflation, tarrifs, etc are all rational to justify a cost increase.
From a conventional financial perspective, raising prices seems obvious.
But Eric sees something more valuable than the additional margin: a promise customers know Costco will keep.
Rather than jettisoning that promise, Costco has invested in its supply chain to help sustain it.
That’s not simply a pricing strategy. It’s a demonstration of organizational character.
And it connects directly to Kass’s experience at Buddy Media.
When pressured to eliminate traditions that reinforced company culture, she chose to protect them and find savings elsewhere.
Different businesses. Same underlying principle.
The business implication
For startups, differentiation doesn’t always require a revolutionary product. It can emerge from an unusually strong commitment to something customers or employees value.
For established brands, the challenge is identifying which promises have become intrinsic to customer trust and resisting the temptation to monetize every available opportunity.
Ask yourself: What promise would our customers care deeply if we compromised or negotiated it in lieu of higher financial returns?
4. In the age of AI, what makes your business unique?
I asked Eric a question that’s becoming increasingly relevant to founders and executives.
If three competing companies have access to the same AI tools, similar technology and comparable information, what actually makes one different?
His response challenged the obsession with efficiency.
When businesses optimize for the same metrics using the same playbooks, they risk becoming increasingly the same. Look at LinkedIn, Meta, TikTok etc. Each platform copies the other.
Eric referenced management thinker Mary Parker Follett and her concept of the invisible leader: the shared purpose that guides an organization beyond the authority of any individual executive.
In other words, your competitive advantage may increasingly depend on what your organization believes, how it behaves, and which commitments it refuses to abandon.
The business implication
For startups, AI can accelerate execution, but speed alone may not create a lasting competitive moat.
For established companies, technology adoption should strengthen the customer experience and organizational identity rather than just replicating what competitors are doing.
Ask yourself: If every competitor adopted our technology tomorrow, what would still make us meaningfully different?
5. Building an incorruptible company requires structural decisions, not just good intentions.
Perhaps the most actionable part of our conversation involved corporate governance.
Eric discussed how Public Benefit Corporations (PBCs) can give founders a legal framework for pursuing financial returns alongside a stated public benefit. Hello, double bottom lines.
He also pointed to governance approaches used by companies such as Novo Nordisk and Anthropic, where organizational structures are intended to help protect long-term mission.
The important distinction is that a Public Benefit Corporation is a legal corporate form, while B Corp certification is a separate assessment and certification process.
A PBC isn’t a guarantee against mission drift, nor is it necessarily appropriate for every business. But it creates another option worth understanding.
The business implication
Early-stage founders should consider how incorporation documents, investor agreements, and board composition could affect their ability to protect the company’s purpose. With the advent of AI and a deluge of information, seek out to understand what structures make the most sense. Defer to advisors and mentors to ask them to help you validate.
Established companies can revisit governance, decision rights and incentive structures rather than assuming those choices were permanently settled at incorporation.
Ask yourself: Have we designed our company to protect its mission, or are we relying on the good intentions of whoever happens to be in charge?
The lesson I keep coming back to
There’s one final detail from my conversation with Kass that I think captures the spirit of this entire episode.
Nearly 15 years after Buddy Media’s acquisition, she shared that roughly 20 to 40 former colleagues still come together to participate in Cycle for Survival (me included), supporting rare cancer research.
Think about that.
The company was sold. People moved on. Careers evolved and grew. On to the next.
But something Mike and Kass helped build continued to bring people together long after Buddy Media sold to Salesforce.
That’s not a traditional business KPI. Yet it says something meaningful about the durability of a company’s culture. Perhaps it’s a ROI on culture?
And it’s why the connection between Eric and Kass matters so much to me.
Eric challenges founders to engineer companies capable of protecting their mission. Kass demonstrates what that commitment can look like when the decisions become difficult, expensive and personal.
The Lean Startup helped entrepreneurs learn how to build companies that work. Incorruptible asks whether we’re building companies that remain worth believing in.
For me, that’s the next frontier of doing good while doing well.
Not whether purpose and profit can coexist in theory.
But whether we’re willing to build businesses where they can coexist in practice and reality
Now I’d love to hear from you: What’s one non-negotiable principle your business, even if protecting it meant sacrificing short-term profit?
Listen to my full Worthy for Thirty conversation with Eric Ries and guest co-host Kass Lazerow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Find their books:
Worthy for Thirty explores the people and businesses proving that doing good and doing well don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Read this book cover to cover the weekend It came out. My entire organizations are built using this ethos and architecture, and I started this process eight years ago, so the convergence of this book and the scaling of my organizations is absolute kismet. ✨