Why Every Founder Should Watch Pig: Building with Devotion and Purpose

On the surface, the plot of the film Pig is unusual: A man name Rob, played by Nicholas Cage, lives in the Oregon wilderness with his truffle-hunting pig. When the pig is stolen, Rob is pulled back into the city he left behind. It sounds like it might be some kind of eccentric revenge thriller. But it’s not.

Instead, Pig is a slow-burning meditation on devotion, grief, building something meaningful, and then losing it. It’s one of those rare stories that strips away the noise and focuses on the weight of what it means to care deeply. If you’ve ever poured yourself into a company, a product, or a culture, you’ll recognize the intensity beneath it all.

At its heart, the film explores a dilemma every founder eventually faces: the tension between devotion and decay, between building something you care deeply about and the pressure to turn it into something else entirely.

That tension struck a chord. Maybe because I know that feeling. Maybe because I’ve seen it in so many founders who start with love and end up lost in a company that no longer reflects who they are. But even for those of us still closely connected to our work, the company we care so much about can begin to blur, buried beneath growth, pressure, or the expectations of others.

There's a lot we can learn from this film about building something real and the cost of forgetting why we started in the first place. So let's dive in. 

The Founder’s Parallel

Every founder I know eventually hits a moment when they step back, take a look at their company, and wonder: Is this still what I set out to build?

That questions sits at the emotional center of Pig.

Rob once created experiences people never forgot. He was a master of his craft, the kind of chef who made food people talked about for years. But after a personal tragedy, he retreated from the world and the work he loved, disappearing into the wilderness with his pig.

When he’s forced to return to the city in search of that pig, what he finds is a world that still remembers his name but has lost touch with his values. Restaurants that once stood for something now chase trends. His former protégés have traded meaning for recognition. Everything is shinier, more efficient, but empty.

Sound familiar? We all set out on our founder journey with a sense of purpose. We build our companies with care, every detail a reflection of what we believe. And then, it inevitably begins to evolve into something new as systems scale, the team grows, and markets shift. What once felt intensely personal can start to take on a life of its own. And if we’re not paying attention, the work that once lit us up can start to feel more like a job than a calling.

Rob isn’t angry when he sees what’s happened. He’s heartbroken. That grief reflects something many founders eventually face: not just the fear of failure, but the realization that what they’ve built no longer reflects what they believe.

This is the part of building no one warns you about. Not burnout or competition, but the risk that you might one day outgrow your own creation. Or worse, that it might outgrow you.

The good news is meaning can be reclaimed. The founders who last — the ones who leave a lasting legacy — are the ones who learn how to reconnect with what matters most, even as everything around them changes. I believe Founder Mode at its core is about founders who wake up and take back control of their vision, of their company's soul. 

We don't get a lot of things to really care about.

Pig (2021)

Grief Is Part of the Work

The truth is, every founder who’s built something with love will one day grieve it, whether they walk away from a vision that no longer fits or pass a thriving company on to someone else.

Pig captures something a lot of stories about loss miss — not just the pain of letting go, but the clarity that can come on the other side of it. Rob doesn’t grieve his past because he wants it back. He grieves it because he remembers what it stood for.

There’s a moment when someone asks him why he walked away from it all — his restaurants, his reputation, the world he once shaped. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even look up. He just says, “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.”

It’s not about sadness. It’s about knowing what matters to you and refusing to compromise.

We live in a time that worships acceleration. Founders are praised for their speed, their hustle, their ability to grow something massive in record time. But the ones I respect most know faster doesn't mean better. They’re building with intention. And they care about staying true to their vision, even as everything around them grows and shifts.

Rob isn’t bitter. He’s disciplined. Still deliberate in how he cooks, how he moves, how he remembers. That’s what mastery looks like. It's not about perfection. It's about devotion.

And when you’re devoted to something, when you’ve poured yourself into every detail, of course it aches when it starts to change. That feeling isn’t failure. It’s the cost of caring deeply.

Holding On to What Matters

One of the ongoing challenges of building, running, and scaling a company is protecting meaning.

You write down the vision, name what matters, and build systems meant to reinforce your purpose and culture. But over time, entropy tries to pull things apart. And as the organization grows, it takes more energy and intention to keep everything aligned with your Why. 

That’s the real enemy — forgetting why you started.

Pig isn’t a revenge film. Rob returns to the city to recover something he’s lost, but what he ends up confronting is a world that’s lost something, too. He’s not trying to reclaim status or punish the people who let him down. He’s there to remind them of what used to matter, to restore a sense of meaning and care in a world that’s moved too fast and forgotten too much.

That’s our task as founders, too.

We can fight entropy by holding on to what made the company meaningful in the first place, by keeping the culture and purpose aligned, and by protecting the soul behind the work. When our Ideal Stakeholders lose sight of what mattered in the beginning, it's our job to remember — and help them remember, too.

What Are You Really Building?

There’s a difference between building something real and building something that just looks impressive.

The pressure to perform is relentless. Metrics, investors, and public perception all incentivize illusion. A kingdom of mirrors is easier to build than a company with substance. But only one of them can last.

In one of the film’s final scenes, Rob serves a meal to the man who orchestrated the theft of his pig. As the man eats, he realizes the meal before him is one Rob had cooked years earlier, the same night he and his wife had shared one of their last moments of happiness. The man begins to weep — not for the pig or for Rob, but for himself.

He confesses that he’s spent his life building an empire of influence, power, and fear. And in that moment, he understands what it cost him: love, purpose, and the simple joy of caring about something real.

It’s a brutal and beautiful moment. Because it reveals a hard truth: You can build for meaning, or you can build for control. One path holds on to what matters. The other chases perception. And as founders, we face that choice every day in what we prioritize, what we protect, and what we’re willing to compromise.

The question is: What kind of legacy are you really building?

Meaning Is Yours to Protect

Pig doesn’t end with triumph. Rob doesn’t get his pig back. There’s no grand redemption. Just a man sitting alone, listening to a recording of his wife singing a song. And somehow, in that act of remembering, there’s peace.

That’s what founders need to hold on to. The point isn’t to preserve things as they once were or to keep them the way they've always been. It’s to honor what matters, especially when it would be easier to move on or forget. The work will change. The company will evolve. But the meaning? That’s yours to protect.

Mastery lives in that kind of commitment. Care keeps the work grounded and honest. Grief is proof you built something worth missing. And keeping your purpose front and center — that’s how you make an impact.

Let everyone else chase the next big thing.

Build something worth remembering.