The One Page Jonah Reyes Wrote Before Choosing Which Team Would Expand

A proposed tax can affect where a founder expands, hires, or keeps capital, but the faithful response begins with stewardship under uncertainty. A Christian founder should examine obligations, consequences, and options carefully instead of treating the proposal as a test of partisan loyalty.

At 6:42 a.m. in San Francisco, fictional founder Jonah Reyes stood barefoot in his kitchen, holding a printed tax proposal in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. His finance director’s overnight note was open on his laptop: if the proposal passed, the company might have to reconsider which office received next year’s expansion budget.

One location had a capable team waiting for more desks. Another offered lower costs and room to hire. Jonah had promised neither office the expansion, but people in both places had begun making plans around it.

If he guessed wrong, one team could lose jobs that had seemed close enough to count on. If he moved too quickly, he could disrupt families and weaken a business that paid salaries, served customers, and supported several local charities.

The decision was still unresolved when his children came downstairs for breakfast.

Taxes change the calculation, not the calling

Recent discussion around California’s proposed billionaire tax has included Mark Cuban warning Representative Ro Khanna that the measure could drive startup founders out of the state. That warning raises a practical question for any founder: how might a proposed rule change affect where capital, hiring, and expansion happen?

For a Christian, the question sits inside a larger one: what does faithful stewardship require when the outcome remains uncertain?

Paying lawful taxes belongs within the moral responsibilities of business. So do honest wages, kept promises, prudent reserves, and care for people affected by corporate decisions. These duties can pull in different directions when a proposal may alter future costs.

A founder can acknowledge that tension without turning every tax debate into a declaration of tribal identity. “My side supports this” and “my side opposes this” are shortcuts. Stewardship asks for slower work: read the proposal, test assumptions, seek qualified counsel, and consider who bears the cost of each available choice.

Keep conviction separate from prediction

Jonah’s first forecast assumed the proposal would pass unchanged. His second assumed political opposition would defeat it. Both forecasts gave him the comforting feeling of certainty, and neither deserved it.

So he replaced prediction with scenarios.

If the proposal passed, could the company absorb the cost without cutting staff or abandoning necessary reserves? If it changed, which parts of the plan would still matter? If it failed, would expanding elsewhere remain wise for operational reasons? Could he delay a commitment without leaving employees in the dark?

This is where margin of safety becomes a moral practice. Holding additional cash, avoiding promises based on favorable legislation, and staging an expansion can protect people from a founder’s confidence. The same principle appears in the story of a financial fortress built while conditions looked safe: preparation matters before the pressure arrives.

Uncertainty also calls for humility. A founder may understand the business and still misunderstand political behavior, migration decisions, or second-order effects. Good counsel should include tax and legal professionals for technical questions, plus leaders who can explain what relocation, delayed hiring, or reduced investment would mean for actual employees.

Stewardship counts people as well as money

A spreadsheet can compare tax exposure and office costs. It cannot decide what a promise means to the engineer who delayed another offer, the manager whose spouse accepted a nearby job, or the community partner expecting renewed support.

Those facts belong in the decision.

They do not require Jonah to keep an office open regardless of cost. Stewardship does not demand preserving every plan after conditions change. It does require truthfulness about what has changed, restraint in making commitments, and serious attention to who carries the downside.

The same discipline applies to family wealth. Resources can support responsibility and generosity, or they can become tools of entitlement and control. A founder choosing where to place company capital faces a related temptation: to treat money as proof of personal power. Christian stewardship replaces that posture with accountability. Capital is entrusted for service, provision, honest work, generosity, and wise preparation.

A written financial rule can keep those aims from sabotaging one another. Marcus’s rule of life offers a useful pattern: decide in advance how earning, saving, giving, and rest fit together, then apply those commitments when pressure narrows your vision.

Write the decision rule before the vote

By late afternoon, Jonah had not chosen an office. He had done something more useful first.

He wrote down the conditions that would govern the decision: preserve a defined operating reserve, avoid layoffs caused by expansion, honor signed commitments, compare locations on service and talent as well as tax, and set aside a consistent portion for generosity. He scheduled separate reviews with qualified advisers and with the leaders responsible for each team.

The proposal could still pass, change, or fail. His decision would adapt to the facts, but it would no longer swing with every headline.

Before leaving the office, Jonah sent both teams a short note. No promises. No political speech. He explained that the expansion remained under review, named the factors being considered, and gave them a date for the next update.

The next morning, the proposal was still on his desk. Beside it sat a one-page decision rule, marked with questions he had not yet answered. That page did not remove uncertainty. It gave him a faithful way to walk through it.