Post Growth Entrepreneurship with Melanie Rieback

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Dec 11, 2024

Melanie Rieback, a cybersecurity entrepreneur and founder of Nonprofit Ventures, discusses her journey into post-growth entrepreneurship—eschewing the traditional Silicon Valley model for sustainable practices. She critiques the conventional capitalist framework and emphasizes the importance of ethical governance models like steward ownership. Rieback highlights the concept of non-extractive business practices, addressing fair compensation challenges while advocating for systemic change. Engaging personal experiences are also underscored as vital for shaping this innovative landscape.

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ADVICE

Issues with the Silicon Valley Model

The Silicon Valley model perpetuates income inequality and is driven by capital holders.
Startup incubators, often acting as investors, are incentivized to push for exponential growth and exits.

INSIGHT

The Problem with Hypergrowth

Hypergrowth, like force-feeding chickens, leads to unsustainable burn rates and high startup failure rates.
Unicorns often operate on a sale-of-equity model, distorting industries and forming monopolies.

INSIGHT

Issues with Impact Investing

The 2/20 compensation model (2% AUM fee, 20% carried interest) incentivizes VCs to push for growth and exits.
This embeds a growth imperative in startups and can lead to extraction even in impact investing.

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Melanie Rieback is a cybersecurity entrepreneur and the founder of Nonprofit Ventures, an organization dedicated to supporting post growth entrepreneurs. She runs an incubator to support post growth entrepreneurs and teaches a course at the University of Amsterdam on post growth entrepreneurship. Her lectures are available on YouTube, linked below.

This episode builds on a long series of conversations on this podcast exploring economic reform: stakeholder capitalism, steward ownership, co-ops, post-growth economics, to name a few. While it's called pot growth entrepreneurship, really this conversation is about non-extractive entrepreneurship. PGE rejects the typical silicon valley model of capital, scale, exit, in favor of bootstrapping, flat growth, and non-extraction.

In this conversation Jenny and Melanie discuss:

Melanie's path from cybersecurity entrepreneur to post growth entrepreneurship
Why not all forms of steward ownership ensure profit serves purpose
Why Melanie believes business is one of the most effective forms of activism
Defining post growth entrepreneurship (PGE)
Why PGE is a leverage point for systemic change
Issues with the Silicon Valley model of capital, scale, exit
Issues with status quo social enterprise and impact investing
Principles of PGE: bootstrapping, flat growth, non-extraction
Asset locks and stable steward ownership implementation
Policy initiatives in Europe to create a steward owned business entity
How to think about fair compensation when implementing PGE
Thoughts on the cultural component of this work
Business as spirituality

Resources:

Nonprofit Ventures website: https://nonprofit.ventures/
Post Growth Entrepreneurship: three minute explainer video
"Putting Post Growth Theory Into Practice" Medium post
Melanie's post growth entrepreneurship course at the University of Amsterdam; 8 YouTube lectures

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