Klai and steward ownership: a company without perverse incentives

Every company starts somewhere. For Klai it starts with a promise: to our customers, to each other, and to the future.

We’ve started. And we’re celebrating that carefully.

Founding a new company is quite something. The optimism of a blank page, the energy of an idea finally taking shape, the honest uncertainty about what’s to come. At Klai we’ve now entered that phase, and we want to be transparent about it.

We don’t yet know exactly what Klai is going to look like. Which customers we’ll serve. How large we’ll grow. Which direction the product and services will move in. That’s the honest reality.

But there is one thing we do know: how we want to build this company.

What is a steward-owned company?

Before we explain what we’re aiming for, a concept that’s new to many people: steward ownership (sometimes called stewardship ownership or purpose-driven ownership).

In most companies, ownership and control are inseparable. Whoever holds the shares has voting rights and decides what happens to the profit. That sounds logical, but it creates incentives that sometimes run directly against the interests of customers, employees, or society. Think of shareholders who prefer short-term profit over long-term investment, or investors who sell a company to the highest bidder even when that has nothing to do with the mission.

Steward ownership breaks this system by separating profit rights from voting rights.

In practice that means:

• Voting rights sit with the people who actually run the company and carry the mission forward: the stewards. They make decisions about strategy and direction.
• Profit rights can sit with external financiers, investors, or employees, but up to an agreed cap. Profit above that cap stays in the company or goes to social causes.
• The company isn’t for sale to the highest bidder, because control always stays with the people who carry the values and mission forward.

Well-known examples include Bosch, Zeiss, Patagonia, and in the Netherlands Triodos Bank and Voys. More and more startups and growth companies are choosing this model deliberately, precisely because they want to stay in control of who they are.

Why does Klai want to become steward-owned?

For us this isn’t a marketing story. It’s a principled choice that comes from one core question:

How do we build a company that does good work, without perverse incentives?

A perverse incentive is a situation where the reward for certain behaviour triggers the opposite of what you actually want to achieve. Traditional company structures hide these incentives everywhere. A shareholder looking to maximise profit has an interest in cutting costs, even if that hurts quality or people. An investor with an exit strategy has an interest in rapid scaling, even if that hollows out the core values.

We want to be a company that serves its customers honestly, that’s fair to its people, and that handles its social role with care. A role where your data stays your data, and where that happens in Europe. Perverse incentives don’t fit with that. You need a structure that makes it possible, and a traditional shareholder structure often works against it.

We’re not there yet, and we’re honest about it

Setting up steward ownership in a legally sound way is complex and expensive. You need notarial constructions, legal advice, and the right partners. You don’t arrange that as a starting company, without revenue, profit, or a proven model, on day one. So we haven’t.

What we have done is something that matters just as much to us: the founders of Klai have signed a mutual letter of intent.

In it we’ve put down:

• that we’re pursuing steward ownership as the structure for Klai;
• that we commit to taking the right steps once certain milestones are reached, such as the first stable revenue, raising (external) funding, or growing to a certain headcount;
• that in the meantime we act in the spirit of this model: transparent, honest, and without making decisions that would later block the path to steward ownership.

A letter of intent isn’t a legally binding document. It’s a moral contract: with each other and with everyone who believes in us. It makes our intentions visible and keeps us sharp.

What does this mean for our customers?

If you become a Klai customer, you’re working with a company that thinks deliberately about its own structure and incentives.

In practice that means:

• we don’t have shareholders demanding short-term returns, so we can make decisions that are better for you in the long run;
• we build on trust as a foundation, not on growth as a goal in itself;
• we’re transparent about where we are: we’ve just started, we’re learning, we’re growing, and we’ll take you along on that path.

An invitation

We’re not publishing this article because everything is already in order. We’re publishing it because we think you have the right to know what we stand for, even when the structure isn’t perfect yet.

Klai is a young company with a clear direction and honest uncertainty about the road there. We’re building something worthwhile, in a way that’s worthwhile.

Curious about what we do, or want to know more about steward ownership? Follow us and start the conversation.