And I’ve been very proud of employees for doing it that way. The company, we always operated by our values. You have to pay attention to all your stakeholders, not just shareholders. And that’s why I think the public-benefit corporation is a great structure, because it puts that right in the charter. I think it’s very important that the internal ethos and way of working of a company matches its charter. Small business has to take care of its customers and its neighborhood, because there is no external safety net. And if I lose one, we probably have to move out of our house. I remember him telling me the importance of customers And him saying we have about three big customers. So just this idea of quality– and then he also taught me about customers. And I’d ask him, is it good enough? And he’d say, if you have to ask me, it’s not good enough. I would do a little job for him, and I’d come back. He had this big sign that said quality is job one. So I worked in that machine shop, and I learned a lot of lessons from my dad. When I was growing up, I didn’t know anything about a public-benefit corporation. I remember being on a bike ride and realizing I have to act here. And then we got close to 1,000 people, and I started hearing about this public-benefit corporation concept.Īnd I thought, wow, that is more like the type of company that I would want to run. It’s a small company, you know? It’s a startup. And I thought, hey, Veeva– it’ll probably go out of business anyway. And I thought that’s strange, that’s not quite aligned with who I am. It was basically you need to make money for the shareholders and don’t do anything illegal, and that’s it. And I read them, and it sounded overly simplistic to me. When I started Veeva, I signed our articles of incorporation. When thinking about corporate governance, it’s really about ethics, about corporate ethics, about trying to do the right things, about realizing you have a responsibility to all your stakeholders, not just your shareholders. And Veeva became the first public company to convert. PETER GASSNER: January 2021, 99% of voting shareholders voted for our proposal to become a public-benefit corporation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |