5 Key Takeaways - Responsible Innovation Founders Summit
What founders need to know
The Responsible Innovation Founders Summit convened nearly 500 people in San Francisco, New York, and online on November 10, 2022. Industry leaders like Cityblock Health CEO Toyin Ajayi, Guild CEO Rachel Romer, Gusto CEO Josh Reeves and many other speakers shared stories of driving responsible innovation to build world-class companies. Pre-register for 2023 here.
Here are the five key takeaways:
1. Use Responsible Innovation tools
Throughout the day, speakers recommended concrete tools and tactics to help founders navigate responsible innovation. From a customizable roadmap to a LinkedIn course, here are a few of the best hands-on resources:
Check out the 'Responsible Innovation for Early Stage Founders' and other panel sessions for more tools.
2. Align values
Articulate company values to guide all decisions – from strategy and operations to product and data to hiring and retention.
“The most important decision we made as a company at the beginning was to clearly align on what our purpose was,” said Claire Shorall, Co-Founder and CEO, Topknot.
“Define your values and principles really clearly up-front. Be meticulous about it.” – Toyin Ajayi, Co-Founder and CEO, Cityblock Health
Misalignment is “not a lack of will, it’s a lack of that constant willingness to re-evaluate and reassess,” continued Ajayi.
Rachel Romer, Guild Education Co-Founder and CEO, directly connects values and incentives: “Be really intentional about...how you intend to get paid. It’s a really important way to define your values.”
Identifying tradeoffs and risks takes time and intention, but these are “really healthy conversations to have as a company builder… this is a byproduct of really big scale, which was kind of the whole point in the first place,” said Josh Reeves, Co-Founder and Head, Gusto.
Chapman Snowden, GoBuild Co-Founder and CEO, elaborated: “The path of least resistance in startups is not to be ethical…At every point, you have to be intentional...carve out a non-trivial amount of time to deal with the implications of these decisions.”
Build rigor through commitment and repetition. As an example, CEO Lauren Peate and Vivek Katial of Multitudes assess product decisions at every quarterly roadmap review based on their five data ethics principles:
Check out the 'Innovating Responsibly Across Your Company'’ and other panel sessions for more takeaways.
3. Build the right team
The right team will define the company. For example, Cityblock is a company “predicated on figuring out how to earn the trust of people who have been systematically marginalized by the healthcare system [and] walk alongside them, make them feel heard, seen, believed, and cared for…We look for folks who really are committed to their communities, committed to showing up for people like them in many ways, who are deeply empathetic, and just incredible problem-solvers,” said Toyin Ajayi, Co-Founder and CEO, Cityblock Health.
As Josh Reeves, Gusto Co-Founder and Head put it, “we’re here to solve problems for the customer. So that’s our due north, but we also want to be proud of how we solve issues for our customers.” He recommends “not hiring a ton of really skilled people who don’t align on your mission” even “when you’re like five people and really, really need an engineer to help with something.”
“Interviewing on mission is the top thing we do.” – Rachel Romer, Co-Founder and CEO, Guild Education
Employees are a key stakeholder. “It is great to have the board and management on board: it is critical that you have the employees,” said Susan Mac Cormac, Partner, Morrison Foerster.
Measure as you scale, advises Lexi Reese, Executive-in-Residence, General Catalyst. “Ask for the same [unit economics] that you have in your customer funnels…What are your employee segments and what is the cost of acquisition for cohorts in these segments?”
Check out the 'Inclusive Prosperity' and other panel sessions for more takeaways.
4. Partner with the right investors
Stay true to company values alignment by choosing the right partners.
"Fundraising is fundamentally a search task, not a sales task." – Claire Shorall, Co-Founder and CEO, Topknot
Claire continued: “There’s no one on my cap table I’m nervous to have a hard conversation with.”
Josh Reeves, Gusto Co-Founder and Head, elaborated later in the day: “I think of fundraising as hiring…all the intentionality you bring to your team…think about fundraising through the same lens.”
This sentiment was echoed by investors, including Quentin Clark. “If the founders don’t raise this, we will often raise it ourselves…as part of the investment process and getting to know the founders.”
“We want to have discussions with founders about their values and how they want to build their company in terms of culture and impact.” – Quentin Clark, Managing Director, General Catalyst
Check out the ‘Responsible Innovation for Venture Capital’ and other panel sessions for more takeaways.
5. Scale responsibly
Technological innovation brought to market at scale by ambitious, venture capital-backed companies is a powerful force that must align with the long-term interests of humanity.
Build for success by thinking long-term. Base10 Partner Laura Weidman-Powers told the audience: “Think about what the world is going to look like in a decade… How do you build a company that is going to be successful, sustainable, impactful, and what are the expectations of consumers and the market going to look like – not today but in the future.”
As Lux Capital General Partner Bilal Zuberi put it, “it’s no longer just a bunch of kids eating pizza, writing some dating website and making a lot of money. This is actually influencing our everyday lives...A/B testing is not enough.”
“A stakeholder mindset is a long-term mindset.” – Rachel Romer, Co-Founder and CEO, Guild Education
Guild Education “started as a B Corp on day one pretty intentionally – the core reason we liked the framework and liked the concept of stakeholder value is that our business only does well when the three sides of our community do well… When you start with a stakeholder mindset, you set yourself up for the long-term.” said Rachel Romer, Co-Founder and CEO.
“The most effective way an early-stage investor can help is through corporate governance. Things like helping you set up the right structure internally.” – Clara Brenner, Managing Partner, Urban Innovation Fund
Clara went on to identify leadership composition, structure, and policies as “the types of interventions that I think an early stage investor can do to be the most useful” toward responsible innovation.
Here’s a look into how real companies are applying a Responsible Innovation mindset from Garrett Smiley (Co-Founder and CEO) and Risto Lähdesmäki (Chief Product Officer) of Sora Schools.
Check out the ‘Business Case for Stakeholder Value’ and other panel sessions for more takeaways.
Thank you to everyone who was able to join us at this year’s Responsible Innovation Founders Summit and to our sponsors, including Omidyar Network, Orrick, Perkins Coie, Silicon Valley Bank, Stripe Press, Ford Foundation, General Catalyst, Gusto, Betaworks, and more. For more about any of these topics, stay tuned on our blog and check out the rest of the Responsible Innovation Founders Summit sessions. Pre-register for your 2023 tickets here – we hope to see you next year!