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Comment by vzaliva | Hacker News Reader

The new emerging hybrid model of non-profit foundations paired with for-profit businesses is certainly interesting, as it combines some "greater good" principles with the ability to build products and run businesses in a modern competitive market. I feel it may take some time to work out the details of these models. The biggest example we've seen is OpenAI, which, in my opinion, still hasn't solved this model and is torn between lucrative multibillion business opportunities and adherence to its founding principles.

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> it combines some "greater good" principles with the ability to build products and run businesses in a modern competitive market

There's also the PBC (Public Benefit Corporation), which in addition to profit / shareholder value explicitly defines positive impact on society as a goal, and exists since 2010 in some states, while in others only since 2022 [1]. But as far as I understand there are no legal requirements or audits that ensure those goals are followed.

Kagi (the search engine, popular in the HN community and I'm a happy customer myself) is one example of a PBC [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

[2] https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-kagi#4

True, but PBC's are still for profit corporations and cannot benefit from tax and other benefits afforded to not for profits.

The biggest (by quite a margin still) is the Novo Nordisk foundation, but it is not really a new one. And its setup is rather different compared to OpenAI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novo_Nordisk_Foundation

What about IKEA? It's smaller than Novo Nordisk, but they also use a non-profit parent company, which is admittedly a bit bizarre.

My experience interacting with Novo Nordisk is that, in their case, this model has led to massive inefficiencies.

The non-profit aspect has led to lots of internal politics and rigged hires. They are much more inefficient than a classical pharma.

> What about IKEA? It's smaller than Novo Nordisk, but they also use a non-profit parent company, which is admittedly a bit bizarre.

Smells like tax evasion, but what do i know. Isn't IKEAs founder one of the richest people in Swiss?

Yes, indeed. IKEA's non-profit parent is headquartered in NL, and it is obviously a tax evasion scheme.

Sweden is not Switzerland. And he died almost ten years ago.

He lived in Switzerland for over 40 years.

Is IKEA smaller than Novo Nordisk?

In practice, maybe not, but Novo Nordisk's current market cap is much bigger. In terms of revenue, I think they are on the same order of magnitude?

Novo Nordisk might return to a more realistic market cap once other GLP-1 agonists enter the market, e.g. Lilly's.

I agree we'll need to work out the kinks, but the big difference is it's hard to see a path towards a gazillion $$$ upside for Proton, while with OpenAI it seemed inevitable. Maybe the AI/ML space will be perfect for a hybrid organization in 30-50 years?

how about mozilla? I believe it's been running with such a setup (foundation+corporation) for a long time.

databricks too, the commercialization arm of the Apache Spark people

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