664: He Changed How the World Builds Startups. Now He's Warning You About What Comes Next | Eric Ries

24:10Rather, we can look at, are my experiments getting more or less productive? Those are like, what's one of the top indicators that it's time to pivot or not? It's like, you just start to get the point of diminishing returns. You're like, okay, I see what's going on here. I just can't, I can't just do more of the same. I got to do something different. So one thing you talk about is this idea of founders get also focused on vanity metrics like total users, top line revenue that lead companies to essentially achieve failure. So what would you say to founders that are focused on some of these type of metrics and how can they shift that mindset or even team mindset to focus on growth instead of focusing on growth to focus on retention and real value?

24:58Yeah. But I have to say the tech journalists have gotten a little bit better on this point than, you know, that it was 10, 15 years ago. But you still see it a lot. When companies put out press releases, they put out these messages like we launched this new messaging system and we've had 10 million messages sent. And you're just like, that sounds like a lot. But is it? Like, is it really? I don't know. Maybe one person likes my product a lot or 10 million people tried it once. Right? Like what's actually going on? So you just, those are vanity metrics. I always felt like they're the metrics you would use to make your competitors want to kill themselves by just making whatever you're doing look as good as humanly possible.

25:37And of course, companies love to release vanity metrics because they don't give competitors any real information about what's actually going on. The antidote, and this is very common because people like they want to feel like they're making progress. Like you saw Meta, like famously, they had this big, big scandal just the other day where they were holding people accountable for how many tokens they're using. And they were like bragging about how you're using 10 trillion tokens a day or whatever for AI. And it was like, it was then revealed that a bunch of engineers were just leaving OpenClaw running on their desktop 24 hours a day to just consume tokens and not doing anything to hit the metric.

26:11So it's like, I don't care about how many tokens you're burning. Tell me about the progress you're making. And that's really like, you know, obviously let me start with a whole chapter about how to set up these analytics properly. So I won't, I won't rehash all that information, but basically you need to be able to see a metric that has cause and effect that is scientifically valid and that people who are looking at the metric actually believe it says what it says it says which in a lot of cases they don't when it comes to the d2c side of things oftentimes products are really a widget and lack that idea of repeat customer base so it's it's do you believe from a d2c site perspective you would still use a Vandy metric of rep top line revenue, new customers, or still, if you are building like from a business perspective, you, you, you want to, you always want to have subscription.

26:59You always want to have repeat customers. Like what's your take with that? Yeah. I don't really understand in D2C why people love to drive their customers into channels where they'll encounter their competitors, customers, competitors products. Like, why would you do that? But like, as a customer myself, like I have so many brands where it's just, it's just more convenient to buy it from Amazon and to buy direct from them. I can't understand this. It's so baffling to me. And like so many DTC brands, I go to their website and it's like spamming me with like sign up for our mailing list and you'll get 20 % off your first order.

27:30And I'm like, I wanna be your customer for life. I like your product and I have to buy it every month. Like, can we make it? I'm like, can we make a deal? No, it's like, I want you to do that. Jump through this hoop, jump through that hoop, sign up for this thing. Let me text you, let me do this. And it's just like, guys, now every day I get these stupid texts from you reminding me that this product exists, but I've already decided to be your customer. These texts are now just annoying me. I don't really want to see them because I've already made the decision. You should save your advertising for people who aren't sure.

28:00So I think a lot of DTC brands are not focusing on the real metric that matters, which is loyalty. Okay. If you can get me to trust you. And like a lot of DTC products are ingested or like I use them in my bed at night. They're products that are close to my physical family. So I'm literally trusting you with my life. So we have a very deep truck relationship in the fact that I'm willing to buy it at all. If you're willing to go with that and cultivate that, you eventually can build a relationship with a consumer where you literally shrink the total available market for your competitors by one.

28:35This person is no longer available to be marketed to because they are 100 % loyal to me and my brand. And I'll tell you a funny story about Apple versus Dell back in the day. So I shared an office for many years with a good friend of mine who used to work at Dell. And, you know, back in the day when they made PCs that were like the dominant laptops and Apple was like the upstart. And I'll never forget, my sister called me one day. She was just giving me the life update. And she's like, oh, good news. My laptop broke. I was like, why is that good news? She's like, oh, now I get to go to the Apple store and buy a new one.

29:12And my friend from Dell overheard this and he was just like, what? So outrageous. Like, why are Apple people like this? Man, we try to we we try to market to them and be like, we have lower price and we have better processors and better whatever, whatever. And like, this is so unfair. Not only does Apple not have to pay the cost of fixing her laptop because Dell has all these massive support costs because people love to complain. She's happy. That she gets to spend money on a new laptop. That's loyalty. She loves the experience of going to the Apple store. And I'd be like, well, what's the Dell purchasing process like?

29:48People love doing that. No, you got to remember that. I don't know if people are old enough to remember this. You said to go on their website, you said like 97 different checkboxes and upsells and ads or whatever. Like it wasn't designed for loyalty. It was designed for revenue maximizing. And I think that idea is extremely important in D2C. So yeah, I like even something as simple as, how about this? a lot of products I buy that are DTC. I want them regularly, but my usage is not so predictable that I know how many units I need per month. Why is it my job to figure that out and keep track of it?

30:22For God's sake, right? We're a lifetime customer. I'm moving your customer for life. Could you please help me figure this out? Or better yet, could you just give me a button I can push when I'm running low and you just send me a new one? Do we have to do a transaction and do the Stripe checkout and I have to do this. And then like, every time you make me do that, I'm like, do I want to use this product again? Like it's absurd. It's like, imagine if like, imagine if your cable company was like, Hey, it's July. Still want to be a cable subscriber? You sure you want to do it? Like, did you, it's like, it's so dumb.

30:54So yes, I think the metrics that we use in these product categories, like often lead us in product directions that are really unappealing to the consumer. Let's talk about your new book. We talked a lot about a lot concepts which have been popularized like you like we talked about kind of off air which is kind of very very popular common thinking now yeah you're launching a new book called incorruptible first and foremost what compelled you to write that book and what can people come to expect this is the cover designed by marcus gosling by the way who designed the lead startup cover. He's a genius.

31:34Yeah, I'll tell you why I wanted to write it. So thanks to Lean Startup, like the privilege of my life is that pretty much every day somebody calls me and asks me for advice about how to start a company, how to raise money for a company, how to reform their management system or like help them go public or whatever. I get these calls. So I get to work with founders all the time. It's like my daily martial arts practice, like a kata, you know, like I just, Oh, here, here's another. And so whenever I have a new idea, I have the privilege of being able to put it into practice with people. Because like people call me and I'm like, I remember the first time I told someone about vanity metrics.

32:08It was just someone called me one day and I was like, hey, I think you should try this. And you know, sometimes people go, oh, I get it. That's great. And sometimes they're like, what? I don't understand. And so then I practice every day. Okay, let me try explaining it a different way. Okay, let me try to get, you know, and then we put it into practice. Oops, it doesn't work. Okay, it does work. Here's the things you gotta know. So I learn about these things as we go. And as a result, I've gotten to watch a lot of companies go through the process of becoming successful, a lot. And I started to feel like there was something deeply wrong with the way we're teaching people to build companies.

32:39And it took me a long time to even be able to put my finger on it. Like I can name so many companies, including many that you can name too, that began with such idealism and such energy and such like a fervor to not just like make a product, but to really like help people make the world a better place. Like sometimes it's really lofty, like, oh, we're trying to fix climate change or whatever. But sometimes it's just like, I just want to make a great product. You ever hear Steve Jobs talk about his love of making a product for the thing itself? You know, like that was a love of craft, a love of quality, a love of whatever, whatever the thing was.

33:10or just a little bit of beauty into people's lives, whatever that spark was, it gets lost as these companies get bigger. And I started to feel like these companies were being surgically deboned. So I tell the story in the book of a university professor from like a top end technical lab came to me for advice building an AI startup. I just call him the professor in the book to protect his privacy. And he was like, I'm trying to figure out how to convince people to join my startup and it's not working anymore. I was like, what do you mean? It's like in the old days, sort of tech company, you're like, we're gonna change the world.

33:44People like, oh, great. And they would just believe you. But now like every scientist I talked about joining my lab is like, how do I know you're not gonna use this for evil? What if this thing turns out like Facebook? What about this? What about don't be evil? What about like, he was getting grilled on these questions. What's the technology gonna be used for? And he was trying to give answers that nobody found satisfying. Cause he's like, but I have such good intentions. And they're like, yeah, but what if you get fired? And he's like, well, I'm not gonna get fired. I'm the CEO. I was like, yeah, but what about your board?

34:10What about your investors? What if investors push us to do the wrong thing? All this kind of stuff. And he was like, I don't know what to say to them. But on the flip side, when I meet with investors, if I tell investors that I have these concerns, they treat me like I'm some kind of communist. Like, oh, you're not serious about business then. Why don't you go start a nonprofit? So he felt like utterly stuck. And the irony of this conversation, I was on my way to a party for another founder who was like at the end of his journey. So this guy was just starting out. This other friend of mine had been a startup CEO for like 10 years, made an unbelievable amount of money, had created so much value for his shareholders.

34:47And one day his shareholders betrayed him and fired him from the company. And we were having this party to kind of like, it was almost like awake, like to mourn the loss. And it's funny when I first started telling the story to people, they were like confused about the story. So like, well, did somebody die? Why is it awake? And I'm like, no, he's alive. He's fine. He's actually doing his next company. He's great now. Like, okay, did the company go to business? Nope, still around, still doing fine. Then what are we mourning? And that was the question, even in the building. I remember talking to employees.

35:16There were employees at this party who that founder had fired and they flew back at their own expense to be there in this party. Like that's how meaningful that company was to them. It was really cool. So I'm telling this story to the guy, you know, to the guy who's building the new company, to the professor. He's like, oh man, respect. that's the kind of company I want to be. And I was like, no, no, no, man, you don't understand that he doesn't work there anymore. He's been fired. His investors are taking the company in a new direction. And he's like, oh, bleep, is that going to be me one day?

35:47Like, are they going to do that to me? And I was like, yes, that's what I'm telling you. If you don't take the right steps now, one day this will be you. And he was like, okay, well, is this a solvable problem? Like, because he was like, I feel like this is corrupt. Can I really build a company that is incorruptible? And I was like, good news. Yes, it is possible. Bad news. You've already made some mistakes. So like, I was like, I gotta go to this party. Let's talk again. And I will help you walk you through the steps of what you need to do. If you actually want to build a mission-driven long-term company that you actually can maintain control of and that can maintain its fidelity to principles you care about.

36:24So that's kind of what the book is about. My experience, I couldn't help that founder whose party it was. I had advised him. I had helped him. But he was crushed by forces that at the time I didn't understand. In the years since, I've come to understand how our financial system really works, how investors actually think, and what the actual structural incentives are for how companies should be built. And thanks to financialization, we've taken these values of our financial system, values of extraction and shareholder primacy, and we have put them into every aspect of modern life. Schools and hospitals and universities and political parties and sports teams.

37:01It's everywhere. It's totally pervasive. So this issue is not even just about founders and their boards and their investors, but like a whole threat to our civilization. That's how I feel about it. And so I wanted to understand how do we get here? Why do we have these best practices that we teach people if they lead to such horrible outcomes? And then, of course, more importantly, what is the new set of best practices that should replace them? Yeah, okay. So a lot to unpack here. the first question that I think will be screaming at people that I have to ask you is obviously you got to go check out the book you know we're recording this in in in April it comes out in May when exactly in May May 26 is the release date everywhere books are sold yeah but you can pre-order your copy now yes please if you would be so kind that would be great yeah yeah so what are the first basic things you need to do to protect your company because as founders, our company is our baby.

38:00We put our blood, sweat, and tears. Totally, absolutely. If you let it, it will take everything from you. One of the ideas in the book that I think is very underappreciated, but most founders find intuitive, is that we do not, we actually, we birth companies. We do not own them, okay? Making a company is a lot more like parenthood than it is like making a spreadsheet. And the thing that you birth is alive. It is a category of emergent intelligence that has its own moral compass, its own North Star, like its own sense of what is right. And you can influence it, just like if you're a parent, you can influence your child, but you can't command it.

38:42This is what a lot of founders misunderstand. They think I could just tell my company what to do and it will do it. And this is a big, big misunderstanding. So if you respect the vitality of these beautiful things that we birth, then you can find your way to a solution to create what I call the architecture of institutional longevity. If you want to build an organization that is true to its values over periods of time, and increasingly now, if you look at the average lifespan of companies, it's going down a lot in this country. By the way, a Harvard Law study that I quote in the book found that among venture-backed companies that follow standard governance, only 20 % of founders will still be the CEO three years after an IPO.

39:28So we're hemorrhaging out founders out of these companies at an alarming rate. If you meet a company these days that has the name of the founder as the name of the product, odds are it's owned by private equity and the founder's not there anymore. It's increasingly common. And I've met so many of these founders who are like bereft. Their baby was stolen from them. And it's like, it still bears their name. It's awful. So it's like, we're building these weak ass companies that are so easy to steal, to decapitate, to redirect, to control. And I just, I find it really frustrating. So if you want to do better, there's two dimensions of kind of work that you need to master.

40:05One is inner, one is outer. The first is what I call the path of ethos. Ethos is an old-fashioned Greek word that means character What is the character of your organization? Does it make principled decisions or is it opportunistic? Does it have a mission that is committed to human flourishing or is it out for itself? These are measurable emergent properties that an organization can have And there are specific techniques we can use to codify and instill in our people a longing to achieve the mission So, for example, I'll tell you one story that I think is maybe the most important story in the book.

40:44There's a guy named Saul Price. And maybe a lot of your DTC founders will have heard of him because in retail, he's like the father of modern retail. He's so prominent. He created a company called FedMart that is such a seminal company that when Sam Walton created Walmart, the reason it's called Walmart was as an homage to Saul Price. Okay, that's how important he was. He was a lawyer. And when he became an entrepreneur, he had this idea that he borrowed with him from his legal training. In the law, if you're my client, I have what's called a fiduciary duty to you. That means I put your interests ahead of my own.

41:17So when he became a retailer, he's like, well, if I'm a retailer, a discount retailer, who's my client? He said, oh, the customer is my client. So he decided that business should have a fiduciary duty to the customer, not just to the investor. He built the company up over the course of 20 years. He took it public. He hated being a public company because the investors were always on him to do more short-term value extractive types of things and couldn't understand his ethos, his philosophy. Just to give you one example of these kind of conflicts, when competitors would try to undercut him on price to drive him out of business, he would post their ads inside his own store and tell customers eggs are cheaper down the street.

41:56You should buy from them, not me. Okay? because they have a fiduciary duty. If the price is cheaper elsewhere, don't buy it from me. Think about how many DTC brands, like how incredibly powerful it would be if I went to your website and you were like, honestly, it's cheapest at Amazon right now. Like the trust you would gain, it's inconceivable. Of course, then I'm like, well, why would you ever let Amazon be the cheapest price? We'll talk about that. I'm sure it's a different, a different bit. But like, if that's what the situation is, don't make me go shop around for it. Who cares about your product more than you do?

42:29Why do I have to research it? Why do I have to go figure this out? Like, why are you not on my side? Saul Price was on your side. And so FedMart was a company that inspired unbelievable loyalty from its customers. They would drive miles out of their way to shop at FedMart. Saul Price gets fed up with being a public company, and he arranges for a syndicate of retail investors to take it private. But it doesn't solve the problem. The new investors are still on him every day being like, come on, man. If you do more conventional retail practices, we'll make more money. We'll grow faster. We want this.

43:02We want that. Perversely, they understood that because customers trust FedMart so much, if they can get Saul to betray those customers, they won't even notice. And if that doesn't sound familiar from certain DDC brands, I don't know. Anyway, it all comes to a head in 1975 when Saul Price comes to work one day. and the locks on his doors have been changed and he doesn't work there anymore. Just like my friend at the party, they just kick him out. So what happened? Investors got their way. Within seven years, FedMart was bankrupt because by betraying the trust of customers, you can get away with it once, of course, you can get away with it twice, but if you do it consistently, eventually you are destroying, you're liquidating the most precious asset a company has, trustworthiness.

43:50Saul Price learned his lesson. He licked his wounds. He took, this is my favorite tidbit of the story. He took two weeks off and then he leased the office upstairs from FedMart and started again. He started a new company called Price Club. Price Club eventually is the predecessor company for what is now called Costco. So Saul Price's story has a happy ending because he learned that not only do you need to have this path of ethos, this character, this engine of trustworthiness in your company, but you need a second thing, the thing I call the path of integrity. that at FedMart, he didn't have, but at Costco, they got this right.

44:26If you build something worth protecting, eventually it will need protection. And I wish someone had told me this earlier in my entrepreneurial career. It took me a long, embarrassingly long time to figure this out. I thought, just like everybody thinks, if you get successful, then you'll have more power. So we always tell people, get product market fit, worry about this other stuff later. When you're successful, when you're big, when you're rich, whatever, then you'll have freedom. Then you'll have autonomy. Then you can have things be the way you want. except, duh, the more successful an organization, the more valuable it is as a target.

44:57If you build up this massive asset of trustworthiness, spoiler alert, people are gonna try to steal it from you. And we are teaching entrepreneurs to build organizations that are so weak. It's like there's no locks on the door. The vault is wide open. Come steal from me whenever you want. So to build high integrity organizations, we have to create what Costco has. I call it a governance fortress. that insulates the decision-making, the skeleton of the company, makes it strong enough to resist outside pressure. If you have these two things together, ethos of human flourishing and principled decision-making and a strong structure that can prevent outside meddling and interference, you can build an organization that is truly built to last.

45:39So when you talk about the structure, it's somewhat around the business model, repeat purchase, just really, really strong indefensibility? No, no, not that stuff. No, no, no. No, okay. So this is the other thing that I think a lot of entrepreneurs are blind to. We tend, when we talk about entrepreneurship, me too, to focus on the surface characteristics, business model, culture, strategy, even vision. Those things are important. But this book is about the underlying forces that act on organizations, whether you want them to or not. So now we're leaving the realm of management behind. We are in the exotic domain that goes by the name of governance.

46:16Now, most founders have never given governance two seconds of thought because it kind of they're like, oh, is it like a building permit? Who cares? In fact, most founders I meet when I ask them if they understand how their own governance works, their honest answer is my what? Like literally in the HBO show Silicon Valley, there's a scene where somebody loses control of their company and one of his own investors, he's like, you can't do that. You don't have the right to do X, Y, Z. And the guy's like, you don't know how your own effing company works? Like, no, Russ, he does not know. Most founders have no clue what is written in their actual constitution.

46:47When I tell them what it says, they often think I'm lying. They're like, no, that can't be right. No way. Who reads their corporate charter? My guy set it up for me. It's always some guy. My lawyer said it was great. I have the best practices. And I'm like, okay, well, do you know that this is like a document basically designed for you to lose control of your company? And I've actually had people be like, you're lying. That can't be right. My guy would never do that to me. And I'm always like, call him up. Ask him if what I said is true and call me back. And they call back and they're like, he says he did me a favor.

47:21That's the best practice. He betrayed me. And I'm like, no, he didn't. You just are too ignorant to know what to ask for. So we have to get way smarter about this stuff. Investor rights agreements, board structure. I know it sounds so boring, but it's actually designed to sound boring so that you'll ignore it, so that you'll lose control. That's actually the whole scam. So I really believe that as operators, as builders, we have to learn to get smart about governance. And in the book, I outline what I call the new governance that is actually way more interesting than the way we do governance. Today, governance is like a compliance checklist plus what's called shareholder primacy.

47:59Just make as much money for investors and don't break the law. But real governance, the right governance for a long-term mission-driven company has to include not just compliance but purpose. Why does this company exist? What is that sacred spark that we're trying to protect? coherence. Are we all actually on the same page and our interests in fact aligned to achieve that mission? And integrity, what I was just talking about, are we protected? Can we resist outside forces? It's way more interesting on top of being more profitable. So we have to work towards wrapping up. We could talk about this all day.

48:32Where's the last place that you would like to leave our conversation? What would you like to leave us with? I was in a restaurant the other the day with a group of friends and someone had been there before and he suggested we eat there. I was like, this place is great. And we sat down, the person took one bite and he was like, hold on, I got to go on my phone for a second. I was like, why? He's like, just one second. He's like, yeah, he shows me the thing. I could tell that this restaurant had been bought by private equity. I could taste it in the food. And we were all like, oh no, private. So then we ate this meal.

49:01It sucked. And then we went to dinner at different place the next night. Again, a different friend had recommended this is the place to go. And we sat down and someone was like, is it the same fucking private equity firm. Like we tasted it. And I was like, I looked it up. I was like, nope, it's a different private equity firm. It tastes the same. You can taste private equity in the food. What are we doing here? It's insane. So I'm going to leave you with a story. Okay. One last story from the book that I love the story. So in the night in 1920, um, diabetes was a fatal diagnosis. Okay. There was no cure for diabetes.

49:29If you got it, you died. And there was a woman in Denmark. Her name was Marie Crow. She was one of the first doctors actually, um, in, in Denmark. She was a pioneer of women's medical education. And she was diagnosed with diabetes, fatal diagnosis. But her husband was a Nobel laureate. He just won the Nobel Prize. And he was on his way to North America to give a lecture tour in the U.S. And she agreed, even though she was a fatal disease, she would travel with him to the U.S. And they're at dinner one night in one of his lectures. And she's sitting next to a scientist at one of the tables. And he tells her about this new technology that's been created in Canada to synthesize artificial insulin.

50:07It could be a cure for diabetes. So she convinces her husband that they should extend their trip in North America, go up, see these crazy Canadians and see the technology for themselves. They meet the Canadians, they see the technology and they say, oh, my God, not only could this save her life, they could save a lot of people's lives. So they want to take the technology back to Denmark and commercialize it. And they make an agreement with the Canadians to license the technology. But the four of them who were there that day, they had an instinctive fear that if you make a life-saving medicine, there's no reason you shouldn't make a profit.

50:39That's fine. You can charge a fair price for life-saving medicine. Everyone else, it's fine. The problem is what about the temptation to abuse that power? If I need a life-saving medicine from you, you can charge me anything you want. What can I do about it? I need it. So they viewed that as an abuse of power. like decades before Martin Shkreli, they foresaw this problem. And so they agreed with the Canadians that they would build a company that was first and foremost a nonprofit scientific research organization with a for-profit company as its subsidiary. This is called an industrial foundation configuration, not that uncommon in the world.

51:16And they went back to Denmark. They created the Nordisk Insulin Laboratorium and started manufacturing insulin. That company, through a bunch of gyrations and other things happening is the company we now know today as Nova Nordisk. The structure that they put together for Nova Nordisk has just lasted with high integrity for more than 100 years, including a time when a bunch of the board members of the for-profit wanted to sell to another pharma company. And there's actually a great acquired podcast episode about this if you want to hear all the ins and outs of it. But the long and short of it is the last step of the technical due diligence before this merger would be consummated was they had to go to the foundation trustees and get the merger approved.

51:58They thought it was a formality because they were gonna make so much money. And the trustees said to them, what is the purpose of this transaction? And they were like, what the fuck? Do you see these dump trucks full of money? We're about to get so rich. What are you doing? Like, what kind of question is this? And they were like, sorry, what was the purpose again? Oh, my favorite detail is they had to have a second meeting. They're like, we're gonna come back with our bankers and explain it to you properly the second time. The second time was like, no, we're going to get so, so rich. The purpose of it was just to make a bunch of money.

52:28The foundation said no. Blew up the deal. No dice. Everyone was super pissed. But we happened to know that the board made a genius decision because two years later, a company that they were going to merge with themselves merged with Merck and all their R &D was shut down. And right after that, a woman in the R &D lab of Novo Nordisk invented GLP-1. She had been working on what eventually became Ozempic for 13 unsuccessful years until they finally had the breakthrough to make it work. Now, Ozempic is the most profitable pharmaceutical in the history of pharmaceuticals, like by a lot. And it drove a Novo Nordisk valuation larger than the GDP of Denmark.

53:13And on the day, the thing I always want people to imagine is on the day when they crossed that threshold, the nonprofit trustees of this for-profit company had created through their actions$500 billion of shareholder value. Okay. So now the next time someone tells you that, you know, you got to do a Delaware C-Corp, Standard Incorporation, don't do anything unusual, man. You know, when the next time some bold contrarian VCs, like you don't want to be too different from other companies, man, you might not be able to raise money. Whatever dumb excuse you here. You have some super smart lawyer telling you this is the best practice, some lawyer, banker, whoever's advising you.

53:50I'm like, that's great. You listen to all the advice you want, but I want you to ask yourself this one question. Are you sure you are smarter than a Nobel laureate? Because August and Marie Crow figured this out and worked out this structure in the 1920s that's still going strong. And they're not alone. A lot of companies have this structure and have been able to resist the corruption that all our best practices enable. So I want founders, if I could leave them with one message is just to open your mind to the possibility that there's a whole universe of corporate structures and forms and techniques that have been hidden from you, but they are your birthright to know these things.

54:25So go experiment, not just with product, not just with design, not just with business model, but with the fundamental structure of what is this thing that you're making. You might find a way to not just make a lot of money, but to sleep really well at night too. Eric, thank you so much. Incredible conversation. Where's the best place people can find out more about this new book? The most important thing, if you are willing, is to sign up for my mailing list, which you can do at incorruptible.co. We have tons of bonus content guides and secret chapters and all kinds of cool. We try to make it as rewarding as possible to come support the book, not just as a one-time purchase, but to be part of the movement.

55:00You can buy the book, Incorruptible, starting May 26th, absolutely anywhere that books are sold. If you like Lean Startup or you feel like I've done anything good for you in your life, if you will pre-order this book, you will return that favor. If you know someone who's an author, what they need is for people to order and preorder their book. It's the thing that makes the book successful enough that then media and other people will take it seriously and pay attention to it. I know it's like so crass to have to talk about this, but that is the reality of life as an author. You can get the book in hardcover, in e-book, and in audiobook.

55:32I personally narrated the audiobook. There's like cool bonus content in it actually. You only get in the audiobook that I'm super proud of, so do check that out. And if you go to our website, not only can you find out that the book is for sale, we have a list of all of the local independent bookstores all over this country who are supporting the book by carrying it. So if you want to, you could buy the book from a local independent bookstore. And then not only are you supporting me, you're supporting your own local community. Why not? Incredible. Eric, thank you so much for your time. And I really enjoyed our conversation.

56:02Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Hey, FounderFam. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And if you enjoyed this episode, please take the time to leave us a review and let us know what you think. This podcast is 100 % free. We work so hard to go out and find the most successful founders and entrepreneurs all around the globe. So your feedback helps us grow, improve, and even bring on more incredible guests and insights. So if you have a second, please take a moment and leave us a review. It really means a lot to me and the founder team. and make so much of a difference. Thank you again for listening and I'll catch you on the next episode.