Stories from the field

This past week wrapped up my US book tour, and I’m in awe at the people I’ve met along the way. I felt as energized by the discussions and engagement in these last few events as I did at the first ones. Interacting with people who are putting Incorruptible’s ideas to work at their own companies and in the world at large has been really exciting.

One of the LA events last week was hosted by Cosmic Buildings, one of the first companies to put Incorruptible’s main principles and mission protections into place. Their commitment to building homes faster and more affordably became exponentially more urgent after the Los Angeles fires in 2025. Cosmic team member Kent Newmark describes their work to help victims this way: “Families are not looking for slogans. They are looking for evidence. They want to know who will stand behind the work, who will tell them the truth, who will help them make decisions before they are ready to commit, and who will still be accountable when the pressure increases”.

Here’s the longer story and reflection from their team:

Last week, we hosted Eric Ries at Cosmic for a fireside chat on his new book, Incorruptible. It was a special moment for us, not only because Eric has been an important advisor to Cosmic, but because the conversation took place inside a finished Cosmic project in El Segundo, surrounded by clients, investors, founders, and families rebuilding in Los Angeles.

Cosmic did not begin as an abstract construction technology company. It began from a very personal place. Two of our founders lost their homes during the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s. That experience shaped the way we think about housing, displacement, dignity, and what it means for a family to be able to come home. 

When we looked at the rebuilding crisis in Los Angeles after the 2025 fires, our founders’ personal history made the stakes feel especially clear: losing a home is not only a financial event, it is a rupture in a family’s sense of safety, stability, and belonging. Thousands of families were facing the possibility that they might never be able to return, not because they did not want to rebuild, but because the process was too slow, too expensive, and too hard to trust.

At Cosmic, we believe the only way to rebuild trust in construction is to change the system itself: reduce cost, reduce time, reduce uncertainty, and give families a process they can actually believe in. It is not enough to have good intentions. If you want a company to stay aligned with its purpose as it grows, you have to design the structure early.

For Cosmic, that has meant building the company in several layers.

First, we became a Public Benefit Corporation very early in our inception. We made a legal commitment to build homes faster and more affordably, and to keep that commitment embedded in the company’s purpose as we scale.

Second, we built the operating model around trust, not just speed. Instead of relying on the traditional construction process, where delays and handoffs compound across dozens of parties, we use robotics, standardized components, and an end-to-end delivery model to make the process more predictable.If we can build faster, families spend less time displaced. If we can industrialize more of the process, there is less room for ambiguity and surprise. If we can control more of the delivery chain, we can be more accountable for the outcome. 

Third, we created a foundation and public benefit commitments that reflect why Cosmic exists. After the LA fires, we began offering free concept designs to anyone affected by the fires, whether or not they were ready to hire Cosmic. For many families, the first step back is not signing a contract. It is understanding what is possible: what can be rebuilt, what insurance may cover, what the home could cost, and what timeline is realistic. 

We also launched our 1:10 initiative: for every ten homes Cosmic sells, we donate one home to someone who otherwise could not return. We know that rebuilding is not only a market opportunity. It is a question of who gets to come home and who gets left behind.

Along the way, Incorruptible has helped us think not only about what Cosmic does, but about what Cosmic must not become.

The danger in any fast-growing company is that the mission slowly becomes a story you tell, rather than a constraint you live by. Financial gravity is real. Growth creates pressure. Investors, customers, operations, and capital needs can all pull a company toward easier decisions. 

That is why Eric’s work has been so important to us. He taught us to treat governance as part of the product. The company structure, the public benefit commitment, the foundation, the donated-home initiative, and the operating model are all different ways of answering the same question: how do you build a company that can scale without losing the reason it was created?

Hosting Eric last week made the whole thing feel very full circle. The conversation was about governance, mission, incentives, and trust, but it was not theoretical. We were standing inside our own finished work, with families and partners who are part of the rebuild, talking about how to make sure a company created in response to loss can grow without drifting from its purpose.

For any founder thinking about these questions, our advice is the advice Eric gave us: do it early.

Become serious about your mission before the company gets complicated. Put it into the structure before the pressure arrives. Build the promises into the business before they become expensive to keep.

It is always too early, until it is too late.

Inside Blackbird House, PBC.

Blackbird House held another special LA event. I asked the team to share their thoughts on our time together with their community, which you’ll find below along with photos of their incredible gathering space.

Last week, in collaboration with Built to Lead, we gathered a group of founders, operators, and investors over breakfast at Blackbird House in Culver City for a fireside with Eric on his new book, Incorruptible. It was a morning of an honest conversation about why good companies lose their way, and what it takes to build one that holds its mission as it grows.

For more than seven years, Blackbird has been building something with rare intention: a membership society and storytelling studio created for the advancement of women of colour, their kindred allies, and co-conspirators. It is a Public Benefit Corporation built on an ethos of social impact and mutual benefit, with productivity, wellbeing, creativity, and advocacy as its pillars. 

The conviction underneath it is one Eric's readers will recognise. The companies, and communities, worth building are the ones built to last.

Bringing those two worlds together over breakfast in Culver City was, quite simply, a perfect fit. A room of founders, operators, and investors sat with Eric for an honest fireside on building with integrity, and you could feel how naturally his thinking met Blackbird's own.

It worked because everyone there had come to the work through alignment, not convenience. That is the thing we believe in most. When organisations and people who care about the same things keep finding each other, the impact does not just add up, it compounds.

This is how a movement toward better, more enduring ways of building gets made, one aligned room at a time.

Recording from the final US book tour stop

At the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Scott Cook, Intuit’s Co-Founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, asked terrific questions, as did the audience. Enjoy!

If what you just read has caught your attention – and I hope it has – you’re invited to join the free Incorruptible Community.

The blueprint and ideas in this book are tools for putting into practice. The Incorruptible Community is a place for builders to pool experiences and share insights. We’re gathering a network of people committed to building organizations that last, including founders, executives, investors, employees, and customers.

See you there,

Eric