We live in a world where everything is owned by a person, or more commonly, a group of people. Startups, the office buildings those startups work in, the patents they create; farmland, the machines used to till the soil, the wheat that comes from it—everything has an owner. But very few people own what they’re building.
Ownership is important because capital is permanent and compounds. An hourly wage or a salary is a debt product (“I owe you money”) with a bi-weekly coupon (“I’ll pay you every other week”). By definition, debt grows linearly. But equity can grow exponentially. As long as there is a divide between those who own and those who do not, there will be an accelerating divide in wealth.
Ownership also creates alignment. A company of owners moves together toward the long-term outcomes of the business. It is a company that solves problems together, grows together, and reaps the rewards of all that hard work together. And the more people that benefit from the outcomes of a business, the more people have the financial freedom to start their own. Democratizing access to ownership also democratizes opportunity for innovation.
We see an opportunity to expand the global ownership graph so that everyone has the opportunity to own a portion of what they build. That’s why we built the infrastructure to make it as cheap and easy to issue equity as it is to run payroll. It’s why we’re lowering the barriers to start investing through software. And it’s why we will always provide the education and tools necessary for owners everywhere. We believe that by providing the infrastructure that fuels innovation, we lower the barriers to entry and move the world forward into an era of ownership.
