Too Many Walts and not enough Roys (opens in new tab)

I have some very wealthy friends that are a couple. They own a successful business in the Garment industry.

The wife is the creative. She is pretty amazing. The husband is one of the most effective businessmen I've ever encountered. I'd hate to be on the other side of a bargaining table from him.

They are both loved by their employees, and by their business partners.

I seriously doubt that they would have been successful, if not for their respective skillsets, and the deep trust that a marriage brings (many marriages, anyway).

I suspect that one of the reasons for the Disney success, is the trust between the two brothers.

Roy O. Disney was just as much a part of Disney's success as Walt, but while many people have molded themselves in Walt's image, the Roys are few and far between.

I have various ill-informed hypotheses, mostly connected to the cult of shareholder value and the decades of short-termism that have resulted. As the author notes: MBAs are not inclined to take big creative risks—but, equally, are would-be Roys not inevitaby likely to be put off the whole enterprise, when whatever they might build must thread an ever-narrower path between failure followed by bankruptcy on the one hand and succeeding sufficiently to become a meal for some huge soulless multnational conglomerate (or evolving in to one) on the other?

Unless one is able to build something without needing to take outside capital, it seems inevitable that anyone willing to take true creative riskes will eventually be pushed out–and by corollary any true successes are unlikely to survive the succession of their original founders unscathed.