Stories from the field

Incorruptible is out in the world! I’m thrilled to share some early reports from the field, from founders who are already putting the Incorruptible Blueprint into practice. Their enthusiasm and relief about having the tools to protect the companies they’re pouring their hearts, souls, and a ton of hard work into is palpable. Their passion for what they’re building is really inspiring. 

James and Jesse are early adopters in two ways. They’re some of the first people to put the book’s ideas into action. And, as founders still in the first stages of company building, they’ve also adopted one of Incorruptible’s main principles when it comes to mission protection: it’s always too early, until it’s too late.

Eric and I have known each other since the IMVU days, where The Lean Startup was being figured out one experiment at a time. Twenty years later, Eric was working on a harder question: not how to find product-market fit, but how to keep a company from drifting away from the values that built it. He asked me to test whether his Incorruptible manuscript could work as a founder's guide, in time to share findings before publication. NICER became a proof of concept.

NICER is now a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation built in four layers. 

• Encoded purpose: the mission lives in Article II of the certificate of incorporation, reinforced by mission pledges for every director and officer. 

• Founder bridge voting: 10x Class B shares to carry founder control through dilution. 

• Founder liquidity: Founder Preferred Stock, so financial pressure can't force a corruption decision. 

• Mission guardian relay: a Class M reservation for a Mission Guardian Entity, modeled on Novo Nordisk, to take stewardship over time. Designed to hand off, not to entrench. A system, not a single seat.

This is the stage-appropriate version of what Patagonia and Tony's Chocolonely, both examples in the book, built at scale. The certificate reserves the right to add enumerated vetoes, activate the foundation with economic rights, and elevate the Class M director to majority influence, but those activations require a mission guardian and economic scale we don't have yet. We bought the option. Now we earn the right to exercise it.

For any founder considering the same, my advice (Eric’s advice!) is to do it at incorporation, before financial gravity makes it harder. The window is wider than you think, but it closes.

- James Birchler, Founder + Chief Scientist, NICER PBC · feelnicer.com

Last week I was listening to Eric on Lenny Rachitsky's podcast and got awe-struck mid-walk. I've spent my whole career building team and culture missions but always struggled with how to interweave the gravity of those with the gravity of building a real business. Eric's framing finally made it click. I reached out to him that day. He invited me to his book launch, where I picked up six copies of Incorruptible, one for each of our cofounders and key engineers. Two moments in the book have already hit hardest. 

When Eric described Cloudflare's mission as "building a better internet," I stopped reading. OMG, that's us. We'd been trying to articulate a mission for Bruce, a verified intro network for the licensed professionals at the center of every home transaction, for years and always landed on something convoluted. "Building a better network" was what we'd been reaching for the whole time. 

Then the section on financial gravity was BINGO. I'd always envisioned gravity was on our side as long as we aligned things properly, but Eric's argument that financial gravity actively pulls you toward short-term shortcuts named the failure mode I'd been worried about but couldn’t articulate. For a high-trust network like ours, the thing that would kill us is some premature financial shortcut that allows behavior against our belief system for a short-term gain. My deepest realization is that this isn't an alignment problem, it's a structural one. Culture-based alignment is malleable and drifts over time, but structure stays in place.

I'm not finished with the book yet (I want to finish it and get the founders on the same page before finalizing anything at Bruce), but I'm far enough in that we've started moving declaratively. We're doing the legal paperwork to convert to a PBC. We've already declared the intent on our about page (https://bruce.bot/about) so we're accountable to it publicly before the legal work finishes. We've always known what we wanted to build, intuitively. We just never had the words to say what it’s for or the structures like a PBC, that could hold it in place. Thank you, Eric, for putting all of this in writing. I think you've done it again.

–Jesse Chor, Founder & CEO of Bruce ·bruce.bot

BOOK TOUR EVENTS!

The list of opportunities to participate in both in-person and virtual events is growing by the day. I hope you’ll find something that fits your schedule here. Please feel free to share with friends, teammates, and communities who might be interested.

STATION DC

Thursday, May 28 from 5:30pm - 7:30pm ET in DC

RSVP here

Ari Shapiro of NPR and I will unpack the ideas behind the book and what they mean for leaders, builders, and anyone operating inside complex institutions. STATION DC is known for bringing together founders, operators, policymakers, and curious minds across DC for conversation and connection. Don’t wait to RSVP for this free event – it’s filling up quickly. 

Kepler’s Books

Tuesday, June 2 from 6pm-7pm PT in Menlo Park, CA

Get tickets here

I’ll be talking with Kim Scott, author of Radical Respect and Radical Candor, at this in-person independent bookstore event. Kim and I did a recent podcast episode about Incorruptible, so we’re all warmed up for a great evening with you.

Book Passage

Wednesday, June 3 at 6pm PT in Corte Madera, CA

Event information here

Alex Komoroske, CEO and co-founder of Common Tools and former Head of Corporate Strategy at Stripe, will be joining me for this conversation. This is a free event in a community icon for books and conversation.

Commonwealth Club

Monday, June 22 at 6pm in San Francisco, CA or Virtual

Register here

I’m thrilled that Scott Cook, Intuit’s Co-Founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, will be taking the stage with me at the Commonwealth Club. This event will be both in-person and virtual, and you can add the purchase of a copy of Incorruptible to your registration for either option. 

And again, thanks for being a part of my work and this book launch.

Eric