Adam Pontrelli — 'Most of us were trained to optimize. Few of us were trained to protect the thing actually worth protecting.'

Adam Pontrelli — EOS Implementer and former Costco vendor — reacts to the 2026-06-17 EO Los Angeles event, applying Eric's Sol Price / Costco governance story to his own decades selling into Costco.

“Costco runs on one stubborn idea, and Wall Street has spent forty years trying to talk them out of it. Take care of the member and the employee first. Trust that the rest follows. I spent years selling into Costco, so I watched that idea up close. It never bent. Last week, Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, spoke to a packed room of EO entrepreneurs about his new book, Incorruptible. His big idea is financial gravity: the steady pull that drags companies off their mission as they grow. He traced it back to Sol Price, the founder whose people and principles helped shape Costco. Price believed his real job was to be a fiduciary to the customer. Cap the margin. Pay people more than you have to, because you actually like them. The most valuable thing a company owns is trust. And the more of it you build, the more pressure you feel to trade it for something that looks like profit this quarter. Most of us were trained to optimize. Few of us were trained to protect the thing actually worth protecting.” — Adam Pontrelli on LinkedIn