- Eric Ries
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- Bright Spots
For the Better comes to you bi-weekly with ideas about how and why to build companies focused on human flourishing and stories of the people who are doing it. Other enthusiasms may occasionally appear.
Year’s end is a natural time to take a breath, reflect, and look ahead.
As we do, I’d like to offer three bright spots to reflect on as we close out 2025.
I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to talk with so many inspiring people for my podcast this year. In particular, if you missed my conversations with these leaders this year, I invite you to add one or more to your podcast queue.
Wishing all of you a peaceful and joyful holiday season. See you in 2026!
Love, operationalized
Most companies optimize for profit. Devoted Health was built to serve people. I sat down with Todd Park, co-founder of Devoted Health and former U.S. Chief Technology Officer, to explore what it looks like to design a company for human flourishing at scale.
Todd shares how Devoted earned one of the highest trust scores in the industry and how he and his brother, Ed, built a business that treats every member like family. Our conversation focused on what it takes to operationalize love inside a system as complex as healthcare.
We talked about:
• What it means to have love as an operational framework
• Why taking on hard problems actually makes it easier to achieve a mission
• How Devoted’s unambiguous mission became a superpower for alignment and trust
• The role of trust as both Devoted’s core metric and its greatest moat
• Lessons from Howard Schultz on scaling culture
Wholesome but unhinged fun
If you've ever seen a video of Duolingo's quirky green owl and thought to yourself, “that is totally unhinged,” it's actually by design.
Behind the success of Duolingo is an incredible story of innovation, resilience, and a company culture that truly embraces long-term vision, with a side helping of that kooky viral fun.
With over a hundred million active users (it’s the most downloaded education app in the world), Duolingo has revolutionized language learning and expanded into teaching math and music.
Earlier this year I spoke with Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo. His mission was simple from the start: make language learning accessible to everyone. Fast forward to today, and Duolingo has a reported 90% of the online daily active users in the language learning market.
We talked about:
• What led to Duolingo’s mascot Duo the owl going viral
• How the 10% of Duolingo’s users that pay make up about 30% of revenue in the education app category
• The newly published Duolingo Handbook and its critical role within the company
• Duolingo’s unique approach to experimentation and how to apply it
Radical generosity
Patagonia has always been different. While so many companies lose their way when profits come before people, the planet, or even their own products, Patagonia has stayed the course, culminating in its conversion to a Purpose Trust in 2022 and the tagline “Earth is now our only shareholder.”
In September, I talked with journalist David Gelles, author of Dirtbag Billionaire, a new book about founder Yvon Chouinard.
We explored how Chouinard built Patagonia with an ethos of quality and conservation, how he resisted the corrupting pull of profit-at-all-costs, and why he ultimately gave the company away to protect its mission.
We also talked about:
What Patagonia’s story reveals about the possibility of building ethical companies that not only survive but thrive.
The case for putting strong protections in place from the very beginning, so that a company’s purpose can endure long after its founder is gone.
Why Patagonia was able to resist the corporate pressures that erode values
Why every company must define its own purpose