Put back more than you take

If all a startup ever manages to do is create wealth for its investors and owners, then it’s not really contributing value back to the world. I really do believe that a big part of the role of the best businesses is to the leave the world a better place because they exist. They put something back.

For us, it was always important that Kinde gives back and creates greater abundance from the fact that it exists.

A lot of businesses use pledging and giving-back programs to achieve this, and I have no doubt that in time Kinde will also. But we believe that there is a far more important role that Kinde has to play. The name of the company is a clue. We looked at Kinde and asked: what is the most impactful thing that we can do that will create the most abundance generally in the world. For us, that is to help as many entrepreneurs to start successful businesses as possible. Not only does this help founders to succeed, but it in turn, helps those founders to employ others and support their families, and also to put products into the world that will help advance humanity in general. The long tail of this impact stretches to millions, if not billions, of lives across the planet. That’s a pretty huge impact.

And so, when we look at every decision we make, the answer should always be the path that leads to a world with more founders. Which means we do a hell of a lot of things that have no direct monetary reward, but in time will lead to a world with more founders. We share learnings at conferences and in accelerator programs. We spend time mentoring and helping other founders. We spend time writing things that will help others to succeed. We do everything that we can as a team to invest into a world of founders. To arm the rebels. And, most importantly, we build a product which we believe will radically reduce the barrier to entry for as many founders as possible.

There’s another thing that we do. And that’s to make every single member of our team an owner of the company. They all have equity. This has the benefit of sharpening their decision making – because they make decisions like owners. But it also means that if we succeed, it will enable our whole team to share in the financial reward. Giving them the funding to hopefully go out into the world and become entrepreneurs on their own also. Continuing the virtuous cycle of impact.

Thankfully our investors are also highly aligned to this purpose.