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OverlayEndMr. [Tom Gardner] said he also favors public companies where the founder remains the CEO. "He or she already has plenty of money," he said. "Most of them are worth more than $10 million, and all the happiness data shows, you're not going to get much happier after that from a monetary standpoint. If you told many people in the workplace, 'Hey, I'll give you $10 million, you want to keep going to work?' Many people would say, 'thank you, no.' If 70 percent are disengaged, most people will take that $10 million and leave.
"I like to know that the person who is leading the entire company is...bought in, their reputation is on the line, they have a huge asset invested in that business," he said, citing as examples Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, and Howard Schultz at Starbucks. He credited Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines for that airline company's being the "runaway best performing stock" from the mid '70s to 2000. And despite what Social Network might lead one to believe, he said, "most people love working at Facebook" under Mark Zuckerberg.
Other companies with great cultures include Google and Chipotle, he said. "Costco pays their employees more than they have to, by far," he said. "They pay substantially more than Walmart pays, and when they're asked, why don't you save money for your shareholders, their answer is, "It's much more costly to lose our employees.'"