Earlier quoted context omitted.
As nice as that sounds, I think it requires an impossibly perfect prediction of future events. You face ethical decisions whenever you have power or limited resources.
No. You can bend your business model towards transactions you are comfortable with, without perfect future vision, or even a clear strategic understanding of how that might happen. In fact, the world around you will bend to meet your values whether you’re even aware of it. And that includes any companies you run. The world does extend beyond your knowledge of it.
Otherwise, it only takes one person to short-circuit that value to set the ball rolling on a shift towards lower standards.
You need to run a super tight ship, which I think is not as hard as it sounds until you put VC, investment, and shareholders into the mix. You at least need to be super diligent about those people you bring in who are not accountable to you, but you are accountable to them.
Basecamp is an amazing example of a company that has succeeded without compromising itself a jot. They do all kinds of things that we might consider unthinkable because they won’t budge on their values. Probably the one company I’d drop everything to work for if I had a chance at getting through their hiring process.