A Company becomes a Walking Corpse, after the Founder Dies

How Businesses Lose Their Soul?

There is a fundamental truth in business that few dare to speak aloud: a company becomes a walking corpse after its founder dies. It may continue to function, expand, and generate billions, but the spirit that made it great—the raw vision, the defiant risk-taking, the obsessive pursuit of something beyond mere profit—dies with its creator. The body keeps moving, but the soul is gone.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in Apple, a company that, under Steve Jobs, embodied an ethos of revolutionary innovation. Under Tim Cook, Apple has transformed into a financial titan, a hyper-efficient corporate machine that generates unprecedented revenue. Yet, despite its staggering success, something feels different. Jobs’ Apple was an insurgency against the status quo, an uncompromising vision of the future. Cook’s Apple is a polished, well-oiled machine that prioritizes stability over disruption. Would Steve Jobs recognize what Apple has become? Would he even love it? The answer seems painfully obvious.

The Founder’s Vision: The Soul of a Company

A founder is not just a CEO. They are the living embodiment of their company’s vision, the fire that drives it forward. They are the ones who defy conventional wisdom, who gamble everything on ideas that seem irrational at the time, and who infect their teams with a sense of mission.

Steve Jobs was not just the leader of Apple—he was its DNA. He didn’t merely create products; he wove philosophy into technology, making Apple a company that people didn’t just buy from but believed in. When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was days from bankruptcy. His response was ruthless and brilliant: he slashed product lines, reoriented the company’s identity, and began a streak of innovations that would redefine entire industries. The iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad weren’t just devices; they were declarations of war against mediocrity, against bloated, uninspired corporate design.

This is the defining trait of founder-led companies: they take risks that managers would never dare take. They don’t just optimize—they revolutionize. They don’t settle for being bigger; they strive to be different. And that’s why, when a founder leaves or dies, a company almost always loses something irreplaceable.

Tim Cook’s Apple: The Perfect Machine

To be clear, Tim Cook is a remarkable executive. Under his leadership, Apple has grown into a $3 trillion empire, expanded into subscription services, and built a supply chain so precise it operates with near-military efficiency. Apple’s revenue streams are broader than ever—Apple Music, iCloud, Apple TV+, Apple Pay, the App Store. The company is an unstoppable financial juggernaut.

But here’s the problem: Tim Cook is a manager, not a visionary. His Apple doesn’t invent the future; it refines the present.

Look at Apple’s product evolution since Jobs’ death in 2011. The iPhone has seen incremental improvements, but no true paradigm shift. The MacBook lineup, once defined by bold reinvention, now moves cautiously, sticking to safe, iterative changes. Apple’s biggest “innovation” in recent years, the Vision Pro headset, is an expensive, niche product—not the kind of industry-defining breakthrough that characterized the Jobs era.

Jobs was willing to bet the company on radical ideas. He killed off the Newton, axed the entire Mac clone market, and committed to an entirely new operating system when it was a massive gamble. Tim Cook’s Apple, on the other hand, is about risk aversion. Even when Apple does venture into new territory, it does so cautiously, protecting its margins and playing the long game of ecosystem lock-in rather than betting everything on something truly groundbreaking.

There’s a difference between making a company bigger and making it greater.

The Walking Corpse Syndrome: The Fate of Post-Founder Companies

Apple is far from the only example. The same story plays out across industries:

• Disney After Walt Disney – Walt was obsessed with storytelling, innovation, and experience. After his death, the company became a corporate machine, focused more on acquisitions and theme park expansions than pioneering new forms of entertainment. The Disney Renaissance of the 90s was an exception, but in the long run, the company’s risk-taking spirit faded.

• Ford After Henry Ford – The man who revolutionized the automobile industry with the Model T left behind a company that eventually became just another car manufacturer. The innovative drive that made Ford a household name eroded over time.

• Microsoft After Bill Gates – For years after Gates stepped down, Microsoft stagnated under Steve Ballmer, focusing on Windows and Office without pushing boundaries. Only when Satya Nadella took over did the company regain momentum—not by reviving Gates’ vision, but by pivoting entirely to cloud computing.

• Amazon After Jeff Bezos – Bezos built Amazon as an empire of constant expansion, from e-commerce to cloud computing to AI. Since he stepped down, Amazon is still powerful but has shifted focus from bold expansion to protecting existing revenue streams. The energy of the company has changed.

• Google After Larry Page and Sergey Brin – Google was once a playground of wild experiments—self-driving cars, Google Glass, audacious AI research. Today, under Sundar Pichai, it’s safer, more bureaucratic, and more focused on advertising revenue than moonshot ideas.

The pattern is clear: once a founder is gone, the company shifts from being a force of nature to being a corporation. It may continue to dominate financially, but it loses the magic that made it an industry-shaping entity.

Would Steve Jobs Love Today’s Apple?

The answer is almost certainly no.

Jobs was allergic to bureaucracy. He was obsessed with design, simplicity, and perfection. He didn’t care about quarterly earnings as much as he cared about making “insanely great” products.

Apple today is more about ecosystem lock-in and revenue maximization. Subscription services, App Store fees, incremental updates, and stock buybacks define Cook’s Apple. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this—it’s good business. But it’s not the Apple that made people believe they were part of something revolutionary.

Jobs would likely recoil at the idea of Apple as a company more focused on selling services than on redefining industries. He would scoff at the cautious, risk-averse approach to product development. He would see today’s Apple as a walking corpse—financially thriving, but spiritually dead.

The Final Death of a Company

The death of a founder is the first death of a company. The second death comes when its identity is fully consumed by corporate inertia.

Some companies take decades to reach this point. Others collapse faster. Apple, Disney, Ford, Microsoft, Amazon, Google—each of them followed the same trajectory. The visionary departs, and the company shifts from disruption to preservation.

This is the fate of all great companies once their original fire is gone. They become walking corpses—still powerful, still profitable, but no longer the force they once were. Apple may be richer than ever, but the Apple that changed the world died with Steve Jobs.

And that, more than anything, is proof that the soul of a company is not in its balance sheet. It’s in its founder’s vision. And when that vision is gone, all that’s left is the machine.

By Noel | Fowklaw