For-profit businesses
Do good first, profit second. Profit is necessary but subordinate. This applies to all of them by standard, not to a self-selected few.
Good-First Capitalism
Every business should be built first to improve the human condition, and only then be allowed to make a profit. PerchLight is the first for-profit business built on this philosophy.
Today, nonprofits and profit-seeking businesses are divided neatly into two distinct categories. This has been used widely to give permission to profit-seeking businesses to primarily focus on making a profit, even at the expense of almost every good in our society. In fact, businesses are often shamed if they dare put other interests equal to, or ahead of, profit. Many might say, “They aren’t fulfilling their legal duty to their investors!”
We reject this notion.
We believe every business should be built and maintained first to improve the human condition, and only then be allowed to make a profit. We need to let go of the idea that only charities owe the world any good. Every entity has a duty to our general welfare, not just a select few run by saints and monks. PerchLight is the first for-profit business built on this new philosophy.
The idea is to build our businesses after the notion of a physician. Before a new doctor earned their first dollar, they traditionally took the Hippocratic oath: do no harm, serve the patient. Only then could they go on to earn millions of dollars. Note that we are specifically NOT saying there is anything wrong with doctors earning millions of dollars. But the oath and the grounding in the human condition should always come first; the income follows, and nobody considers that income to be shameful.
Good-First Capitalism declares that every business should work the same way. Every for-profit company should first be held to a standard of improving the human condition. Profit is necessary, and it can be honorable, but only when it is the secondary goal, pursued in service of the first. A business that is solely focused on extracting profit is out of balance with the general good.
For-profits vs. charities
The line between them is not whether they do good. Under Good-First, both must.
Charitable organizations
Reserved for organizations that do not seek profit at all, funded by grants, government and philanthropy to further a cause.
The difference is the funding model and the intent to profit. Doing good is required of both.
How it would be enforced
Change the legal default, treat published promises as binding, create private standardization groups by industry, require honesty, and let the courts do the rest.
The Good-First movement looks to leaders in each industry to create acceptable standards, template statements, and published expectations.
Once made, the company’s oath and human-condition statement should be treated as a binding promise to the public. Anyone who relied on that promise and was harmed when it was broken may hold the business to it in court.
This philosophy does NOT promote broadening government legal oversight or enforcement of Good-First principles beyond requiring the underlying oaths and statements, along with annual revisions and renewals, and enforcing those published promises in court.
- 1. An oath at formation.Part of every new business filing, and taken personally by anyone who joins a board or leadership (see below). Always published and visible. It sets the culture; the pieces below give it teeth. It must be re-averred annually.
- 2. A published human-condition statement.At launch, every business publicly states how it helps, what harm it risks, and how it will combat that harm. Revised and published according to industry standards and benchmarks.
- 3. End shareholder-first as the default.A director’s first legal duty runs to the human condition, not to shareholders. In practice: a company could no longer argue “our first priority was to our stockholders” as a defense. Most states already let directors weigh other interests; this makes the ordering the rule rather than the exception.
- 4. Standards set privately, by industry.Industry standards, templates and risk checklists written by private standard-setters, adopted by each business, and enforced through its own published promises.
- 5. The litmus test.“Did you follow your industry’s published standard, or publicly explain where and why you departed from it?” Then, “Did you do what you said, in good faith?” Following the standard is a safe harbor. Liability attaches to misrepresenting your plan or abandoning it.
- 6. Guardrails against abuse.Narrow standing, so not every competitor or activist can sue. A good-faith safe harbor. Remedies that start with “disclose and correct” and escalate only for willful, wanton, or repeated failure, again based on industry standards. A short, bright-line floor of hard stops for grievous harm, most of which the law already has.
The Good-First Oath
The oath we suggest each business leader take at formation or on joining a board or leadership, renewed each year.
As a steward of this business, I affirm that its first priority will always be to improve the human condition. Profit, although a noble and worthwhile pursuit, will be held explicitly secondary and subservient to this primary goal.
I promise:
- I will put the good of humanity before the pursuit of profit, and never treat harm to others as merely trivial or as an acceptable cost of financial gain.
- I will state plainly how this enterprise improves the human condition, what harm it may cause, and how I will prevent or repair that harm, and I will hold this enterprise to what I have stated.
- I will seek to avoid harm whenever possible and take proactive steps to do so.
- I will respect, protect, and renew limited resources.
- I will carefully consider industry standards, and I will adhere to them or explain publicly why my standards differ.
- I will always act with honesty and integrity, and represent our purpose, our performance, our missteps, and our risks truthfully.
- I will not profit by deceiving or exploiting the people we serve.
- I will seek profit only by lawful and honorable means.
- I will not use my resources or influence, or those of this business, to weaken the standards it has promised to keep.
- Insofar as my business allows, I will seek to improve the human condition by providing increased:
- basic needs, such as food, clean water, and shelter
- affordability
- access to goods, services, and resources
- personal dignity and self-determination
- financial independence, livable wages, and honorable labor
- education and skills
- family connections and community
- truthful and accurate information
- protection, privacy, and safety
- recovery from illness, poverty, trauma, or war
- freedom from addiction
- freedom from tyranny
- health in all its forms
- justice and equality under the law
- peaceful living conditions
- beauty, creativity, recreation, and joy
- hope for the future
- comfort and stability in old age.
- I will answer for this enterprise’s effect on the people it touches: its workers, its customers, its community, its world, and those who cannot speak for themselves.
- I will not outsource harm through others.
- Where possible, I will choose to partner with others who also seek to do good first.
- When goods conflict, I will choose the path that does the least harm to those with the least power.
- If this enterprise passes to new hands, I will require its new stewards to take this oath.
- I accept that this oath binds me in deed and not only in word: that I may be held to the plan I have made and the good I have promised.
This I pledge freely, and upon my honor.
Compared to other philosophies
Four commitments. Together they are what separates Good-First from similar frameworks that came before it.
1
Ordering, not balance
Stakeholder capitalism, the triple bottom line and the benefit corporation all ask a company to weigh social good alongside profit. Good-First does not ask for a balance. Good is the precondition. Profit is what you can earn once you have met it.
2
Universal, not a designation
Doing good should not be a badge some companies opt into. A badge quietly implies that everyone without one is excused. The standard should apply to every for-profit business.
3
Profit is required, not apologized for
A for-profit business that cannot pay its people, its bills and its owners is not a business, and it cannot keep doing good. Good-First is pro-profit. The key rule is the order in which the two priorities are held.
4
Say what you will do, then do it
Before launching, every business should state plainly how it will improve the human condition, what harm its work could cause, and how it will prevent or repair that harm. Then it should be held to its own word. Certain industries should hold themselves to specific standards, and include specific provisions based on known risks (e.g. oil companies should address potential oil spills).
PerchLight: the first business built on Good-First principles
Not a company that adopted the philosophy. A company that was built from it.
PerchLight allows a person in need to request the specific thing they need, with dignity, and the person helping knows exactly what their gift was for. A sponsor funds an exact item at an exact store. No cash changes hands, and every gift is to be verified by receipt. That is the good, and it came first. The product was designed around it before a single line of the business model was written.
The profit came second. PerchLight is openly a for-profit company. It charges a small card & verification fee on each gift, sized so every gift pays its own way and little more, keeping the service as affordable as possible. We hope sponsors with a little more to give will support us by adding a tip. We did not seek benefit-corporation status, because a badge implies that the un-badged businesses are off the hook, which is exactly the premise that Good-First Capitalism rejects.
Good-First is not just a slogan on this site. It is a paradigm every business decision at PerchLight is run through: before pricing, before partnerships, before any change to how money moves.
The end goal is to be so profitable that we can use our profits to start the next Good-First venture, and the next, and the next…
How it came to be
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The old argument
In 1970 the economist Milton Friedman argued that a business’s one social responsibility is to increase its profits within the law, and that doing good is for the owners to do with their returns. For fifty years that has been the default. Benefit corporations, B Corps, stakeholder capitalism and the triple bottom line all pushed back, but each as a balance to strike or a badge to earn. In 2009, graduating students at Harvard Business School wrote an “MBA Oath,” a Hippocratic oath for business. About half of that year’s class signed it and MBAs from other schools followed, but with nothing to hold signers to it, it remained a symbol.
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Spring and summer 2026: a business is built first
PerchLight was designed in the spring of 2026 and built over the summer as a for-profit company whose reason for existing was to help people in need. It is operated by an ordinary Utah LLC. Benefit-corporation status was considered and turned down on purpose.
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July 29, 2026: the idea gets a name
Nate Roberts, the founder, wrote the philosophy down: the physician’s oath, good as a precondition rather than a counterweight, and a standard that should apply to every company rather than a chosen few. An early working name, “Hippocratic Capitalism,” was set aside because the MBA Oath had already used the Hippocratic framing without the ordering or the universal claim. The name became Good-First Capitalism, with the order written into the name itself. The same day, a governance proposal was sketched and the first version of the Good-First Oath was drafted.
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September 2026: it becomes the first test
As PerchLight prepared to launch, every decision about structure, money, partners and pricing was put through a written set of ten tests. Good-First Capitalism is test number one, ahead of profit, ahead of growth. It is the reason the company is built the way it is.
See the idea at work
PerchLight is Good-First Capitalism in practice: a real need, a real gift, verified by receipt, and a business that pays its own way.