What the World Needs Now

Caring about more than your business should be a prerequisite for any entrepreneur starting a company today. Read on for Warby Parker’s playbook.

FROM THE PANDEMIC to climate change, global crises are forcing consumers and employees to rethink their relationships with institutions. Consumers are aligning them-selves with companies that are both committed to positive social change and invested in caring for their own teams—making a social mission vital for any entrepreneur starting a company today.

In 2010, when my co-founders and I were launching Warby Parker, we could see it was becoming increasingly critical for the private sector to step up its role in solving global issues, but the road map hadn’t exactly been drawn yet. We were determined to build a new kind of business, one that could scale quickly while doing good in the world. We just needed to figure out how to do it.

We knew the problem we wanted to tackle. Our North Star—what gets me and my co-founders up in the morning and what we remain passionate about today—is vision for all. This seed had been planted years ago, while I was working for the international nonprofit Vision-Spring, training low-income individuals to start businesses selling affordable eyeglasses to those living on less than 4 a day. I was shocked to learn that over a billion people around the world needed glasses but didn’t have access to them.