What does it really mean to make a profit — and why do so many mission-driven companies eventually betray the very things that made them great? In this episode, Eric Ries, creator of The Lean Startup and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, joins Amie Vaccaro and Jonathan Jackson to discuss his new book Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric dismantles the conventional definition of profit and offers a radical replacement — profit as the maximization of human flourishing — then explains "financial gravity," the unconscious pull that bends organizations toward the values of whoever holds the money, whether investors or donors. Through the origin stories of Costco and Novo Nordisk, he shows how "mission lock" structures protected both companies — in Novo Nordisk's case, preserving the research that became Ozempic and creating over $500 billion in shareholder value. The conversation closes with practical power for everyone else: a "no-courage activism" question any job candidate can ask, and why every transaction you make transmits your values. As Eric puts it: "You're not stuck in traffic — you are traffic."
Related Resources:
https://theleanstartup.com/ – Eric's foundational methodology and NYT bestseller on entrepreneurship and continuous innovation.
Answer.AI – The AI R&D lab founded by Eric Ries and Jeremy Howard.
B Lab / B Corp Certification – The certification body behind B Corps; Dimagi was the first B Corp/PBC in Massachusetts, referenced in the conversation.
Novo Nordisk Foundation – The mission-guardian foundation whose governance structure blocked the merger that would have killed GLP-1 research.
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