IMPACT

Every time someone buys something with Affirm instead of a credit card, we've saved them from the compound interest trap.

We've saved our customers over $3 billion in bank fees. That's not our revenue — that's money people kept instead of giving it to banks.

Getting paid two days early sounds small unless you're choosing between groceries and a late fee. Then it's everything.

We've paid out over $3.5 billion to creators. That's not ad revenue split by an algorithm. That's fans directly paying for work they value.

We've facilitated over 10 million therapy sessions. That's 10 million times someone got help they might not have gotten otherwise.

Every therapist we onboard means hundreds of patients who can now see someone in-network. The leverage on the supply side is enormous.

Every small business owner either loves Yelp or wants to burn it to the ground. There's no middle ground. That kind of emotional reaction means we actually matter.

Pokemon Go got 147 million people to walk outside and look at their phones at the same time. No product in history has done that. Not even the iPhone launch.

We matched four million people with therapists. Four million. Most of them had never spoken to a therapist before. That's not a business metric. That's a public health outcome.

Critics say online therapy isn't real therapy. Tell that to the millions of people who got help for the first time in their lives because we existed.

Our customers sleep 32 minutes more per night on average. That's four hours per week. 200 hours per year. We're literally giving people more life.

Etsy isn't an e-commerce company. It's an economy. Two million sellers feeding their families because this platform exists. That matters more than the stock price.

Uber, Microsoft, and Booking.com use Flutterwave to accept payments in Africa. Five years ago, they couldn't accept a single naira. We unlocked an entire continent for global commerce.

DoorDash drivers get paid instantly after every delivery. That instant payout? That's us. Every time a gig worker sees money hit their account in real time, that's Marqeta making it happen.

SoftBank invested. Meta invested. Prosus invested. But the real investors in Meesho are the 15 million small sellers who bet their livelihoods on this platform every day.

We sold 2.5 million rings. Prince Harry wears one. Jeff Bezos wears one. But the customer I care about is the nurse working night shifts who finally understands why she feels terrible — and changes her schedule.

A chai wallah in rural India accepts PhonePe. A street vendor in Varanasi accepts PhonePe. That's not a tech story. That's a financial inclusion story. And it happened in five years.

Our average seller makes $500 a month. That's not life-changing money. But for a college student or a stay-at-home parent, it's meaningful. We created 80 million micro-entrepreneurs.

During COVID, the UK government needed to distribute emergency business loans. The big banks were slow. We processed Bounce Back Loans faster than anyone — 18% of the entire UK scheme. A four-year-old bank outperforming institutions that are 300 years old.

We approve 27 percent more borrowers than traditional models and at lower interest rates. That is not a small improvement. That is a fundamentally different outcome for millions of people.

Sentry catches over a billion errors per day. A billion. Every single one of those is a moment where someone's code broke and they need to know about it before their users do.

I give $5,000 to 1,000 entrepreneurs every year with no strings attached. Some will fail. But the ones who succeed will create jobs, pay taxes, and transform their communities. That's the highest-return investment I know.

Record labels told me streaming would destroy the music industry. Global music revenue has more than doubled since Spotify launched. We didn't destroy the industry. We saved it from piracy.

I left a billionaire's life to run a government project because some things matter more than money. Giving 1.3 billion people an identity was one of those things.

We enrolled 1.3 billion people into Aadhaar. That means we gave a verifiable identity to hundreds of millions of Indians who had never been able to prove who they were. A bank account, a phone number, a government benefit — all of it starts with knowing who you are.

My First Million isn't just a podcast — it's a public brainstorm with millions of listeners. Every episode generates ideas that people go build. We're an accidental incubator, and I love it.

Steve built beautiful products. I want to build beautiful outcomes — schools that work, immigration systems that are fair, media that tells the truth.

An avocado lasts twice as long with Apeel. That means fewer avocados in the trash, fewer trucks on the road, and less water wasted growing food nobody eats.

A malaria bed net costs $2 and saves a life. That is the most efficient investment in the world. No stock can compete with that return.

The first tweet was just setting up my twttr. Nobody knew it would change how presidents, protesters, and pop stars communicate.

550 million riders. 15 million drivers. That is not a startup. That is a transportation network serving a significant portion of humanity.

Every scooter trip replaces a car trip. That is measurable, real carbon reduction happening 100,000 times a day.

We have given away over 3 billion dollars. Criminal justice reform. Education. Healthcare. The returns on philanthropy compound just like investment returns.

In Argentina and Turkey people use USDT to save their money from inflation. We are not just a crypto tool. We are a lifeline.

The Signal Protocol encrypts WhatsApp Facebook Messenger and Google Messages. Our technology protects billions of conversations. We do not charge a penny.

Sustainability is not our marketing strategy. It is our product. Every item sold on Depop is one less item in a landfill.

One percent of equity. One percent of product. One percent of employee time. The 1-1-1 model has been adopted by 17,000 companies.

Michael Phelps doing our ad made mental health mainstream. Sometimes a famous face does more for destigmatization than a thousand papers.

We save doctors two hours per day. That is two hours of patient care or two hours with their families. Both matter.

If this works it eliminates the last excuse for burning fossil fuels to keep the lights on during a cloudy windless week.

Giving $200 million to make medical school free was easy. The decision was easy. Writing the check was easy. Knowing it would change thousands of lives — that's what matters.

The best part of my job is seeing someone who's never made music before create something that makes them cry.

I lived in Kenya and saw firsthand how broken international money transfers were. That's why Remitly exists.

Our first delivery was blood to a hospital in Rwanda. A doctor texted us, and 30 minutes later a drone dropped the delivery.

In Rwanda, our drones deliver blood faster than an ambulance. That difference saves lives.

Every major shoe brand now has a sustainability line. We started that conversation. That matters even if the stock doesn't reflect it.

Every Remitly transfer represents a family connection. Someone is sending money to someone they love.

Back and joint pain costs the U.S. healthcare system $380 billion annually. Digital therapy can cut that dramatically.

Every transaction represents someone trying to participate in the digital economy. We make that possible.

If we can identify cancer risk before symptoms appear, we can save millions of lives.

We made version control social. That sounds simple. It changed how all software is built.

The return on investment in improving lives is the highest return you can earn.

The Fenty Effect happened because we treated every skin tone like it mattered. Because it does.

I started with a $500,000 loan from my uncle. Now I employ 30,000 people. That's what entrepreneurship does.

Education is the most powerful lever for changing a nation. Everything else follows from it.

Exponential technologies will solve humanity's biggest problems. We just need to invest at the right scale.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that the return on investment in improving lives is the highest return you can earn.

The world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities.

M-Pesa processes more transactions per year than PayPal. Most Westerners have never heard of it.

50 million users in a continent where most people never had a bank account. That's not fintech — that's infrastructure.

AlphaFold predicted the structure of 200 million proteins. That's more than all biologists in history combined.

80% of the world's DNA is read on Illumina machines. Every major genetic discovery runs on our hardware.

I grew up in a village near Kyiv with no phone. Now 2 billion people use the communication tool I built.

Al Gore invested through Generation. If supply chain visibility reduces waste and emissions, it's a climate solution.

10 million Cologuard tests completed. Every positive result is a life potentially saved.

$2.5 billion in annual revenue from a test that replaces colonoscopies. Convenience saves lives.

Colon cancer kills 50,000 Americans a year. Most of those deaths are preventable with early screening.

In rural Africa, there are no ultrasound machines. There are smartphones. That's our market.

We forced every brokerage in America to go to zero commissions. Whatever else you think of Robinhood, that's real.

I sold Celtel for $3.4 billion. But the real value is that 100 million people can now call their families, check market prices, and send money by phone.

Mobile phones didn't just connect Africa. They created African banking, African commerce, African information. The phone was the infrastructure.

Shoprite feeds millions of Africans every day. That's not a business. That's infrastructure.

Change the systems, not just the symptoms. The most effective dollar is the one that changes how institutions work.

We bought a hospital system because venture capital should build things that actually matter, not just things that exit.

100 million customers. More than most countries have citizens. That's what happens when you make banking actually work for people.

Biocon's insulin serves millions of diabetics who could never afford the branded version. That is what keeps me going after 46 years.

The Apprentice made "You're fired" the most famous catchphrase in America. Whether that's a good thing depends on who you ask.

Our chips are in 170 million vehicles. Every time someone's car brakes to avoid a collision, there's a good chance our technology made that happen.

Five million people have logged into Zwift. That's more than the population of New Zealand. And they're all exercising. A gaming company that makes people healthier.

We've planted over 100 million trees through customer purchases. Every swipe of the card grows a forest somewhere.

Farms using CropX save 20-30% on water. In a world running out of fresh water, that's not just profitable. It's necessary.

Our first loans were $10. That sounds small until you realize $10 is a week's groceries for a family in Lagos. Small money, big impact.

If you want to fix poverty, you have to fix the infrastructure that creates poverty.

Energy is not just a commodity. It is civilization. Every barrel extracted builds a hospital or a school somewhere.

We want to give in a way that is as impactful as possible. That means being willing to fund things that are hard to measure and that most people are ignoring.

Global health is where you can save lives for a few thousand dollars each. That is an extraordinary opportunity to do something real.

The question we always ask is: what is the best use of the next dollar? Not what cause is worthy, but what will this specific dollar actually do.

I have been given a tremendous gift — the opportunity to use the resources I have to tackle the world's most pressing issues before it's too late.

Open-source infrastructure for public goods may be the highest return on philanthropic capital we can achieve. When the government adopts what you build, your investment multiplies a thousandfold.

I visit every project we fund. I do not trust reports. I trust what I can see with my own eyes and touch with my own hands.

There is nothing artificial about AI's impact on real people and real lives.

What inspires me the most is creating impact, and making a difference, through innovation and entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs are the best tool humanity has for solving its biggest problems.

My box is pretty simple, is it a business that creates a lot of value for society?

We are fighting a war for our future.