I want to write about what I consider the ideal relationship between a company and the people who work in it. This piece is based on a podcast conversation I had on this topic.

Summary of My View

  1. The right type of relationship depends on what you're trying to build. If you want to build a long-term business, you need to invest in "long-term relationship structures" — including financial planning and management.
  2. Both companies and individuals change constantly. When their orientations overlap, they come together; when they diverge, they part ways. Fluidity is actually the natural and healthy state.
  3. Both orientations are waves. Over a long life, they may overlap multiple times. Being able to return when that happens is itself a form of that fluidity.

Premise: This Is a Long-Term Business

10X, through Stailer, is in the business of defining and rebuilding the infrastructure of daily grocery shopping. "10x-ing the retail experience and industry" is Stailer's product vision — and it's inherently a discontinuous challenge. It's not something that gets completed in one year, five years, or even ten. We'll need to keep pushing as a perpetual beta, indefinitely.

So how to sustain the business over 30 to 50 years is a major challenge for me as a CEO. Sub-issues include:

  • Helping members approach their work with genuine enthusiasm
  • Eliminating financial anxiety so people can focus on running without worrying about short-term targets
  • Enabling focus on creating 10x
  • Enabling maximum speed toward 10x through shared behavioral principles
  • Enabling the layering of complementary expertise to handle complexity

There's no silver bullet for any of this. Progress only becomes visible through daily, incremental accumulation. And that accumulation, bit by bit, creates the foundation for Public Relations — the kind that earns attention from new people. That cycle is slowly widening the circle of people who know 10X and Stailer.

Personally, I spent five years working at a company I didn't own before starting 10X. During that time, I was acutely sensitive to whether my vector and the company's vector were aligned. When they overlapped, I had incredible drive. When they diverged, my performance dropped. I was a high-variance person — genuinely difficult to manage. I was aware of it.

That's precisely why "the relationship between a company and an individual" is such an important topic for me, and why I try to embed my thinking on it into how I run this company.

What Does the Ideal Relationship Look Like?

A company is simply a vessel for achieving something larger than any individual could achieve alone, while generating social and financial returns. The company's primary purpose is its business goal — it allocates resources toward that goal with speed (= a vector). That vector is exposed to all kinds of forces, and discontinuous change is its destiny. The companies that resist change and what happens to them — that's visible to anyone reading this.

Individuals are constantly changing too. For me personally, the major discontinuities were: being a disaster survivor, marriage, the birth of my first son, the birth of my second son (who became seriously ill shortly after), and founding 10X. Each of those inflection points demanded a shift in values, which in turn required changing how I used my time — my most valuable resource — and who I learned from and spent time with.

In the relationship between these two constantly-evolving entities — company and individual — the ideal state is when the company's direction resonates, or overlaps with where you personally want to go. When those vectors are aligned, working together is joyful. Your outcomes are linked to your own sense of fulfillment. That's what high vision-mission-values alignment feels like.

The problem is when the vectors were once aligned but have drifted apart. Both company and individual change; there will always be moments when they no longer overlap. This can happen even to founders and executives. (A podcast I did with SmartHR CEO Miyata-san explores this in depth — well worth listening to.)

When a company is small, strong individual relationships make it easy to navigate that drift — to explain it, work through it, reach mutual understanding. But as a business gets traction and moves faster, that breathing room disappears. Volatility on both sides increases, and misalignments become more frequent.

What Truly Long-Term Looks Like

From the company's perspective, members who stay for a long time are deeply appreciated. I want to build many such relationships. But I don't think "not staying" is a failure or a problem.

A colleague who once shared values and sailed on the same ship, and later parts ways to take a different path — if that's the right choice for both parties, I think it should be encouraged. And as both continue to change, there might be a point down the road where paths converge again. If you once resonated deeply on values, that's possible.

The company is just a vessel providing opportunity. From the individual's perspective, whether the vessel is a good fit for you — that's a question I think you should pursue with complete selfishness. Just as I did.

10X has been fortunate: in roughly four years since founding, we've had zero departures. Thorough, slow hiring where both sides genuinely understand each other before anyone signs on is a big factor. But this is a company that changes rapidly, and departures will come eventually.

When they do, I want to be able to say: "Maybe now wasn't the right time, but you chose to get on this ship after confirming our values aligned, and I'm grateful for that. If the timing ever works out again, I'd love to work together at 10X."

That's what a truly long-term relationship means.

The company and the individual are both agents trying to do their best for the problems that matter to them in the world. When their efforts overlap, I expect we'll produce something powerful together at 10X.

Why I Wrote This

I'm starting to feel that the speed at which Stailer is moving has exceeded my own imagination. The organization is going through major change just to keep up.

I'm fundamentally a small person. Every time we add a new member, I feel it acutely — the organization shifts. I ask myself whether they'll be able to work happily, whether the cash flow is healthy, whether I can keep organizational health high, whether the values we've built will scale.

There's excitement at working with someone new, mixed with anxiety. Writing this was partly an exercise in re-anchoring my own stance — so I don't lose it in the middle of growth.