By Brock Castellanos III, Founder & Chief Vibes Officer, NepoCorp Ventures
Last year I wrote a book about only hiring people dumber than me, and did an op-ed for IRREVERENT about it. A lot of you got mad. Cason—he’s my VP of Strategy, the one who put a fork in the microwave three times—Cason said the LinkedIn comments were “not aligned with our KPIs.” I fired the intern who showed them to me. Not because I was angry, but because I believed in the message. And belief, as I tell my COO Tessa Vorhees whenever she asks why we’re out of toner again, is infrastructure.
Tessa calls supply chain “the truck part.” She makes $540,000 a year. This is working.
Now get ready for the next level. This is about the kingdom you build after the hiring. This is about sycophants. This is about love, the only kind people like us can feel.
I. Why Sycophants Are Better Than Friends
Friends tell you the truth, which is a serious design flaw.
A friend will look at your $19,000 toilet—the one that plays Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” on loop whenever the lid lifts—and say something like, “Brock, that’s weird.” A sycophant will ask if you want the volume louder. A friend will mention that your Chief Compliance Officer has been indicted twice. A sycophant will offer to take the third indictment for you. Now that is infrastructure you can really use.
My CCO, Lawson Mecklenburg-Strauss, has taken two federal indictments for me. He has never once asked what they were for. Last Tuesday over seabass at Carbone he said, “Brock, I just want you to know, if there’s a third, I’m ready.” I didn’t ask. He didn’t explain. The seabass was $78. I tipped $400 because that’s what loyalty costs.
Friends want you to grow. Sycophants want you to stay exactly where you are, because that's the only place they're safe. I am 31 years old and have founded 14 failed companies: I have never been more successful. Do the math. The math is sycophants.
My assistant Tabitha went to Yale. She graduated in 2023. She is always weeping. Not loudly. Just a soft, continuous weeping, like a humidifier. She wept when I told her this piece was due. She wept harder when I told her she’d be transcribing it from voice notes taken in the back of my G-Wagon. I asked her once why she weeps. She said, “I don’t know. I think it’s just who I am now.” Perfect. A person who doesn’t know why they cry will never ask why you do what you do.
II. Screen for Weakness
You don’t find sycophants, you screen for them. The way you screen for termites.
Red flags in an interview: The candidate says “principles.” The candidate asks about “equity.” The candidate has a subscription to The Economist and mentions it without being asked directly. The candidate makes eye contact with my chef Marcelo, who does not make eye contact with anyone. Marcelo has worked for me for four years. He has never once looked at my face. He looks at the wall behind me. He looks at the Loro Piana sweater I’m wearing. He looks at the $4,200 espresso machine he uses to make my morning oat cortado. He does not look at me, which is one boundary I respect. Candidates who try to force eye contact with Marcelo don't get offers.
Green flags: The candidate laughs before I finish talking. Not because what I said was funny, but because they are already laughing. Because they have decided that whatever I say will be worth laughing at. Lawson laughed at “good morning” once. I promoted him that afternoon. He didn’t know he was being promoted. He just laughed. That’s the bar.
The ideal candidate has just enough education to be ashamed, but not enough to escape. Tabitha has a Yale degree. She is ashamed of it. She tells people she went to “school in Connecticut.” She thinks this makes her sound humble; it makes her sound trapped. A person who is hiding their own credentials will never question yours. I dropped out of a state school in Florida after eleven months and I tell everyone. She knows more than me and will never act like it. That gap is where the stable kingdom lives.
Cason, my VP of Strategy, spells logistics with two G’s. “Loggistics.” He has spelled it this way in three board decks. The board—my father, my uncle, and a man who owes my father money—has never corrected him. Last month I watched Cason present a slide that said “Loggistical Framework for Q3 Synergies.” I felt something close to peace. A $395 Loro Piana cashmere crewneck feels like that. Soft. Expensive. Something you earned without fully understanding how.
III. The Loyalty Test
You can’t buy loyalty, you test for it. The way you test a bridge. You put weight on it and see if it holds.
Every new hire at NepoCorp gets a small task in their first 90 days. Nothing big or dramatic. Just something... questionable. Filing an amendment to a document that doesn’t exist. Signing a receipt for something that was never delivered. Mailing a package to an address that doesn’t appear on any map. I tell them it’s “operational hygiene.” I tell them “everyone does this.” I tell them “it’s just how the truck part works.” Tessa taught me that last one.
If they do it without questions, they’re mine. If they ask questions, they’re a mole. Not a real mole. I don’t think corporate espionage is real, but the fear of it is useful. I think the word is useful. I have called three people a mole in all-hands meetings. Two of them still work here. They work harder now. They laugh louder now. They know I am watching.
Garrett used to have a podcast. Now he is my Chief of Staff. I tested Garrett by asking him to book a dinner for eight people at a restaurant that only seats six. He did it. He told the restaurant it was a “brand partnership.” He told the guests it was “intimate.” He made it work. I didn’t ask how. A Chief of Staff who explains how is just an employee. A Chief of Staff who makes six seats hold eight people without complaining is infrastructure.
Lawson passed his test in 2019. I asked him to hold a briefcase for 48 hours. He didn’t open it or ever ask what was inside. He kept it in his bathtub, he told me later, because he didn’t want his wife to see it. I don’t remember what was in the briefcase: I'm not sure I ever knew. But Lawson kept it in his bathtub for two days, and that's why he's my CCO. That's why he'll take a third indictment. That's why we are better than friends.
IV. The Information Diet
Never let them know anything real.
This is the most important part. Opinions are the first symptom of independence, and independence is the first symptom of betrayal. You do not want opinions. You want agreement. You want nodding. You want the sound of a person who has heard you speak and has decided that the best possible response is no response at all.
I run three meetings a day. In none of them do I share actual information. I share direction. I share energy. I share the feeling that something important is happening, without ever defining what that something is. Cason takes notes. I've seen them, his notes are gibberish. “Q3 loggistics alignment. Brock energy high. Action items: synergize.” He is my VP of Strategy. He has spelled strategy correctly every time. I don’t know why this surprises me. It shouldn’t. He knows which words matter to me.
Tabitha knows my calendar, my medications, my blood type. She does not know why I founded NepoCorp. I have never told her. I have never told anyone. I don’t know the answer myself. That is the point. If I don’t know, no one can know. If no one can know, no one can use it against me. This is architecture, not paranoia.
Marcelo knows what I eat, but no clue what I like. He prepares the same three meals in rotation. A $240 ribeye. A $68 grain bowl. An omelet with white truffles that cost $180 per ounce. I have never told him I prefer the omelet, nor has he ever asked. He looks at the wall. He cooks. This is the perfect relationship.
Tessa Vorhees thinks our biggest competitor is “the other truck part company.” I don’t know which company she means but I don’t correct her. If she knew who our real competitors were, she might talk to them. If she talked to them, she might compare notes. If she compared notes, she might realize that our supply chain doesn't technically exist. That our product does not exist. That NepoCorp is a holding company that holds nothing but vibes. She thinks the truck part is late, and I let her. The truck part isn't late, it's part of a story I told her in 2021.
V. The Purge Cycle
Every 18 months, fire your most senior sycophant. Publicly and loudly. Make it unforgettable.
This is necessary maintenance, not punishment. You change the oil in a Ferrari every 3,000 miles. You change your senior sycophant every 18 months. Same principle. Same precision. Same cost.
The first time I did this, I fired my original CFO in the middle of a standup. He had been with me since Company 3. He had watched 11 companies fail and still believed in me, which was the problem. Belief calcifies. Belief becomes expectation. Expectation becomes leverage. I don’t do leverage. I do vibes.
I told him his “energy was no longer aligned with the vertical.” He cried. Cason laughed—he didn’t know why he was laughing, he just saw me not crying and followed the signal. Tabitha wept, but Tabitha always weeps. The room felt electric. The room felt awake. Two junior analysts who had been considering grad school decided to stay. They saw what happens to people who get comfortable. They saw what happens to people who think they’re safe.
You don’t fire them for failure -- that's part of the job -- you fire them for success. For loyalty that has lasted too long. For knowing too many bathroom codes. For having seen you without the Loro Piana. The purge creates an opening, which creates desperation. Desperation creates the exact kind of person who will laugh before you finish talking.
Lawson knows his 18 months are coming. He told me last week, unprompted, that he would “walk into the ocean” if I ever needed him to. I told him I don’t need him to walk into the ocean. I need him to be ready to. That distinction is why he’s still here. For now.
VI. The Kingdom
This is the final state. Not a company: a kingdom.
They cannot function without you. Not because you are talented. Not because you are smart. Because you are the only one who knows where the bodies are buried, and more importantly, you are the only one who knows that there are no bodies. Just stories about bodies. Just the threat of bodies. Just the fear that somewhere, in a briefcase kept in a bathtub, there is something that could ruin them.
Lawson has done enough questionable things that leaving inevitably means explaining them to a grand jury. He won’t leave. Cason has misspelled enough public documents that his resume is a liability. He won’t leave. Tessa thinks the truck part is real. She will die waiting for a truck that was never coming. She won’t leave. Tabitha weeps. Where would she go? What would she do? She went to Yale. She is from Connecticut. She is mine.
Garrett had a podcast. He interviewed entrepreneurs. He asked them about their morning routines. He believed, once upon a time, that success was about discipline. Now he books dinners for eight at tables for six and doesn't ask why. He is my Chief of Staff and will never have a podcast again.
Marcelo looks at the wall. He makes the omelet. He does not make eye contact. He has never asked for a raise. Actually, I don’t know if he speaks English. But I don’t need to know, I need him to cook. He cooks. This is the kingdom.
Now you think this is dark. You think this is sad. You think I am lonely in my Brickell penthouse with my Brian Eno toilet and my $4,200 espresso machine and my staff of people who would not tell me if I had food on my $395 sweater. You are laughably wrong. I am not lonely. Lonely is wanting someone to know you. I have built something better. I have built a place where no one knows anything, and everyone is too afraid, too loyal, too incompetent, or too weepy to point it out.
That is peace.
That is the kingdom.
And you can build it too. You. Reading this. In your WeWork, studio apartment, or in your car, voice-noting ideas that no one asked for. You can do this. You have the capacity for strategic incompetence. You have the capacity to hire people just smart enough to be ashamed and just dumb enough to stay. You have the capacity to test loyalty with small crimes and maintain power with large silences.
I believe in you. I really do.
Not because I want you to grow. Because I want you to stay exactly where you are.
That’s what sycophants are for. That’s what I am for. That’s what the kingdom is.
Welcome home.
Brock Castellanos III is the Founder & Chief Vibes Officer of NepoCorp Ventures. He lives in Miami. His toilet plays ambient music. His staff does not make eye contact. He is accepting LinkedIn connection requests from people who laughed before finishing this sentence.