The giving back was something we put into the company charter as naive first time founders. But it was a very important value alignment between the three co-founders. We wouldn’t have such a wonderful relationship for over a decade of working together, if three of us didn’t value the same things. So you can view it as a value matching filter for choosing who to work with whether they are co-founders or investors.
For the causes that we choose to give back to, I went to MIT at the generosity of a donor setting up a scholarship fund for students from developing countries. I still had some student loans but the bulk of my MIT tuition was paid for by some stranger who I’ve never met. I felt very strongly that it’s important to pay it forward for the next generation. We also believe education is a force multiplier. Then when we started to feel the urgency of the climate crisis, since we aren’t actively solving the problem ourselves, we figured it’s important to contribute to the progress. I did a bunch of research on where the highest impact we can have and set up clear criteria for how to deploy our donations.
We are truly very lucky to have nicest investors you can imagine who happened to have value alignment with us on this. We also have returned their investments in multiple times over as dividends throughout the years. That definitely helps. 