Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Should everything scale
The public conversation about scaling is mostly about whether to raise venture capital or bootstrap. Far fewer people ask whether a donut business should scale at all, what scaling would involve, or what it costs. Everyone knows a restaurant that was really good until it grew and now sucks.
Company life cycles
Companies may have a life cycle, like other things. Microsoft started with the mission of putting a computer on every desk, and it did that. Its mission now is devices and services and doing cool things. The company as an institution dates to roughly the fifteen hundreds, possibly with the East India Company: people gather for a purpose, and once it is done, they could disband or keep a minimal staff. Crypto builders do something similar when they build one layer and move on to the next.
A death doula
A death doula for companies would help one that has achieved its mission to pass on, and the people could come out of it as its children and start new things. Society currently incentivizes every company to scale no matter what, which produces zombies and worse versions of what they used to be. There are around fifteen hundred unicorns, and if some of them are zombies, they need grieving and a chance to move on. That support doesn't exist because no one talks about endings.
How did early companies exist only for one purpose?
Early American corporations were chartered one at a time by special acts of a legislature, usually for a defined project such as building a canal, a bridge, or a turnpike. Many charters carried fixed terms, and the company ended when the term or the project did. New York passed a general incorporation law for manufacturing companies in 1811, and other states followed over the next decades. Perpetual existence for any lawful purpose became standard only after those general laws spread.
How did the East India Company shape corporations?
England chartered the East India Company in 1600, giving it a monopoly on English trade with Asia. The Dutch East India Company followed in 1602 and became the first company to issue shares that traded on a public exchange, in Amsterdam. Early joint-stock ventures often funded a single voyage, and investors were paid out when the ships returned. Over time these companies became permanent institutions with shareholders who could sell their stakes.
Where did the death doula idea come from?
End-of-life doulas borrowed their name from birth doulas, and the word doula comes from a Greek word for a female servant. The role grew out of hospice and palliative care in the 2000s and 2010s, supporting dying people and their families with practical and emotional presence. Social worker Henry Fersko-Weiss co-founded the International End of Life Doula Association in 2015 to train people for it. They are not medical providers and work alongside nurses and physicians.
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