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Why Medici
They identified Michelangelo, Donatello, and Galileo and gave them room to work. The company follows the same split: Medici holds the money, law, regulatory, product, and people functions that any business unit needs, and the units, with their artists and scientists, do the work.
A hybrid structure
Peter Rahal runs the group as a hybrid. David Protein is one business unit with its own sales, marketing, supply, and finance, and Hallpass is another. Each runs semi-autonomously with its own P&L.
Paying for speed
On paper, that looks inefficient: payroll is high, and there are double the salespeople. Speed is the main design objective, and a company designing for speed pays for extra people. The leaders of the units are former founders or product leaders.
How did the Medici fund the Renaissance?
The Medici family's wealth came from the Medici Bank, founded in Florence in 1397 by Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici. His descendants Cosimo and Lorenzo used that wealth to commission buildings and art, and Lorenzo hosted the young Michelangelo in his household. Donatello worked for Cosimo, and in 1610 Cosimo II de' Medici hired Galileo as court mathematician. Galileo named the four moons of Jupiter he had discovered the Medicean Stars in the family's honor.
How was the original Medici Bank organized?
The bank operated as a holding company in Florence that owned branches in cities such as Rome, Venice, and Geneva. Each branch was a separate partnership, with a local manager holding a minority share, so a failure at one branch did not directly sink the others. Economic historian Raymond de Roover documented the structure in his 1963 study The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank.
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