Much bigger questions are these: What happens to the company’s soul should it become a public company? What happens to the mission of “belonging”? What happens to changing the world? What happens to “the United Nations at the kitchen table”? Can you have a social mission and be a big behemoth on Wall Street? Plenty of tech-industry giants, of course, claim they have missions. Facebook’s is “Make the world more open and connected.” Google had “Don’t be evil” until its new parent, Alphabet, changed it to “Do the right thing.” But balancing mission and Wall Street expectations is a tricky thing.
