Great questions, Alex. Thank you for the thoughtful response! Will attempt to answer your questions here briefly

How do you guys balance the inherent tension between the patience it will take to fulfill your team’s mission and the general impatience investors have for startups that aren’t seeing “10x” growth?

The short answer is have good investors. We turned down $500k checks from funds that were run by people we didn’t think were investing in our mission and have moved mountains to make sure impact-oriented investors like Kapor Capital are on our term sheet.

Tactically, our team believes that every business is different and needs to be tested and executed objectively. We said no to any investor who felt that they “knew” how a business like ours should be built or wanted us to apply a “Uber for x” methodology to our community. Businesses, like people, are unique. We believe that attempts to shortcut the discovery and learning process will impede long term business health. You simply can’t build an airplane after it’s already taken off.

How do you guys measure/frame success in a way that shows substantial progress towards fulfilling your mission?

We measure impact, not just $$$. Company revenue and dollars made per cook are still key metrics, but we also find out what the relative impact of those dollars are for each cook. This involves asking them how happy they are with the money they make on Josephine, and how they would think about making money if Josephine didn’t exist. One-hundred dollars means very different things to people in different socio-economic strata. In fact, there are plenty of situations where money is not accurate way to measure human motivations.