Pam Kostka (former All Raise CEO, 2 IPOs + 3 acquisitions) — 'Endurance is a design choice, not a reward for good intentions'

Kostka is a multi-stage LP and the former CEO of All Raise, with two IPOs and three acquisitions behind her. She sat next to Eric at Leah Solivan's Unprecedented Lunches, a series built on the premise that breaking with precedent is core to innovation, and wrote up two ideas she took away.

“Two ideas worth designing in from the earliest days: The first: best practices destroy value far more often than we admit. We adopt them because someone labeled them best, then stop asking whether they still earn their place. Adoption isn't validation — "everyone does it" is how value quietly leaks out, one unexamined convention at a time. The second: trust is infrastructure, not value in a culture deck. The companies that build it into their operations and governance from the earliest days, for teams, customers, and shareholders alike have a competitive advantage. In the AI era, where authenticity is cheap to fake and expensive to prove, that's not soft. It may be the last durable advantage there is. Endurance is a design choice, not a reward for good intentions.” — Pam Kostka on LinkedIn