Customers are humans, not numbers. Always treat them with dignity, empathy, and respect.

Genius is evenly distributed but opportunity is not.

Empathy is the core of every great company, community, product.

Products should be purposeful. Too many startups have moved fast and broken things; it’s time to renew things by building and scaling meaningfully.

Play is essential for exploration and innovation. Everyone is creative.

Relationships, not transactions, are the lifeblood of community. Investing in them creates more surface area for positive outcomes.

Founders and companies cannot thrive without community.

Data and research are means to understand how to best serve people’s needs, not to manipulate or as vanity metrics.

All startups need and deserve elite talent in design, development, product, digital media, growth marketing, and executive leadership.

Invested capital must produce a risk-adjusted rate of return. At the same time, shareholders are one of many stakeholders in a business.

Investors and founders want to integrate their beliefs and values into where they spend their time, money, and talents.

Companies can scale while remaining committed to their missions and values.

Mission-oriented startups must approach development with just as much intellectual and operational rigor as any other company seeking to scale.

There are scalable business models to profitably address societal challenges such as climate change, food deserts, lack of economic mobility, traditionally under-resourced communities, income inequality, unequal access to healthcare, inadequate supply of affordable housing, and many others.

Measuring and reporting impact metrics is necessary but not sufficient for longterm success. Business growth and momentum yield greater impacts.