You are right, but as others have noted, I should have put a caveat on my assertion that the incentive mismatch is really there for companies with "outside owne

You are right, but as others have noted, I should have put a caveat on my assertion that the incentive mismatch is really there for companies with "outside owners", either in the form of a publicly traded company or large VC/PE investors. If you keep a company private, and you don't take sizable outside funding, you can pretty much do whatever you want with your company.