How to build a company that withstands any era | Eric Ries, Lean Startup author
Lenny's Podcast · 2026-05-10 · 1h 39m
Episode notes
Eric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup , a book that reshaped how a generation of founders think about building companies. His new book, Incorruptible , explains how successful companies are destroyed by failing to protect what makes them valuable, and how to change it. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why 80% of venture-backed founders are ousted within three years of going public 2. The governance structures that protect companies like Anthropic, Costco, and Novo Nordisk 3. The simple legal filing that takes two pages and could save your company 4. Financial gravity: why successful companies predictably get corrupted into mediocrity 5. Why mission-aligned companies like Anthropic reap major benefits from protecting their mission through governance 6. Why success won’t protect you - it instead makes you a bigger target -
More from Lenny's Podcast
All episodes →- What happens after coding is solved? | Fiona Fung (Manager of the Claude Code and Cowork Teams)82 / 100
- The hidden pattern behind successful products | Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga)
- Father of the iPod and iPhone on building taste, judgment, and creativity in the AI era | Tony Fadell
- A rational conversation on where AI is actually going | Benedict Evans
- The AI paradox: More automation, more humans, more work | Dan Shipper