This is really cool. I think I'm going to start blogging about our business practices in a couple years, which are very different than most companies. In some sense, we are running our company more like a distributed project, like Linux or Bitcoin.

Our company's mission is: "Empowering individuals, uniting communities."

Our company's motto is: "People live lives, companies create products."

Why not something like "don't be evil?" Because our company's distributed, and focused on creating products that empower people. The whole thing about a centralized company opposing its users or doing something to screw everybody is exacerbated when there is massive centralization, data centers, a building with lots of employees, jobs entrenched interests, lobbying, etc.

We are embracing the new distributed world that git, bitcoin, etc. help usher in. So company's mission involves build products to empower people. Will the company be worth billions of dollars? Probably, because we're going to be the first movers on our platform. But the platform powering what we do will create tens of billions of value outside what we capture.

I think this new movement to decentralize our institutions really does help empower individuals and unite communities. And it's gaining steam along the lines of http://asyncmanifesto.org/#.U44s7gov84U.gmail and https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus...

I wrote this about 3 years ago: http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21