Every fee structure has a misalignment baked in
Two observations stacked on the same Friday morning. The first one I’ve lived. Marketing agencies typically charge a percentage of marketing spend as their fee. The agency makes more money when the client spends more money. The incentive is to grow the budget, not the results. I’ve been quietly dismantling that arrangement in our vendor stack for the last couple of years. The second one I heard this morning. Pavel Durov on the Lex Fridman Podcast (#482, Sept. 30, 2025), making the point that drug companies aren’t actually incentivized to find the root-cause cure. They’re incentivized for you to keep taking the drug. Recurring revenue. Maintenance, not resolution. ...