Hetty Green

Richest woman in America during the gilded age, who was extremely frugal.

Green’s thrift was essential to her investment strategy, as it enabled her to buy assets confidently in the midst of financial panics because it prepared her to live on minimal living expenses.[1]

Good lesson for Distributed Market Substition - becoming a lasting, great company as in Good to Great - can be made possible by 'coasting on fumes' if the times are rough. Ie, low-overhead operation. Or allowing us to make business decisions based on a lean model that are normally impossible for a standard business model. That is how transformation can take place. The above quote regarding Hetty clarifies this point. In fact, this has already proven to be an endurance strategy where low overhead allows for regular operations either on $25k or $250k budgets in the startup phase.