O'Hayer: John Mackey's Conscious Capitalism essay inspired his future business model
Matt O'Hayer · Vital Farms: Matt O’Hayer. How a serial entrepreneur re-branded the egg · Mar 23, 2026 · at 28:52
Vital Farms founder Matt O'Hayer describes how reading Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey's original essay on stakeholder capitalism shifted his entrepreneurial philosophy away from quick exits.
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“I'd read this essay that had been written by John Mackey called Conscious Capitalism... It described that, you know, businesses need to have a deeper purpose besides just making money... What Whole Foods did is for their five stakeholders, which is the customers, the employees, the shareholders, the vendors, which I thought was interesting. They're treating them as an equal. And then the last one was the communities slash environment where they operate. So I was inspired by that. I knew that whatever I did going forward, I wanted it to be part of that kind of model.”
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