Spin Out What You Build, Never Hoard Scale

“the anti-conglomerate conglomerate. If you own dozens and dozens of disparate businesses, you’re certainly a conglomerate. And we’ve housed as many as sixty different brands. But I had become opposed to the concept of agglomeration. Bigness for bigness made no sense to me. When I decided a business was sufficiently developed, we’d spin it out into an independent entity. As we built up all these entities, I thought managing them centrally wasn’t the best way.”

“We created a business model that is still unique to us—and as I write this we’re contemplating our eleventh spin-off. I don’t believe scale gets you anywhere other than sloppy governance. In so many cases consolidation is just an ego and organ-sizing competition. In today’s world you don’t need scale to compete, you just need a good idea—getting it noticed and distributed is at the touch of the send button on an iPhone.”