The Mission-Lock Pledge
The pledge that makes the rest credible.
Where user welfare conflicts with business returns, users win.
That isn't a promise. It's a structural commitment, written into the corporate form so it survives our intentions.
Why "no IPO" was the wrong commitment
The shorthand "we'll never go public" sounds protective, but it targets a symptom, not the cause. Public-benefit corporations list their stock on exchanges. Private equity firms abuse users far more aggressively than most public companies. Patagonia's perpetual purpose trust would have been compatible with a public listing if its founders had wanted one.
The thing that determines whether a company can be made to harm its users is who the corporate form legally answers to. If it answers to outside investors whose returns require ever-growing extraction, the company will extract — no matter who runs it. If it answers to users, employees, or a mission, the company is structurally restrained.
So the pledge isn't about IPOs. It's about ownership.
What we pledge
The Six
- Mission-locked ownership. Every ez2bg project incorporates under a structure that names users (and the mission) as the legal beneficiary, not outside shareholders. Available vehicles: public-benefit corporations, foundation ownership, perpetual purpose trusts, mission-locked nonprofits. We pick the one that fits the project — we never pick one that doesn't bind us.
- No surveillance business model. We don't run on behavioral advertising. We don't sell user data. We don't build features whose purpose is to maximize time-on-app.
- No extraction-model capital. We don't take money from sources whose return depends on growing user-hostile revenue lines. Patient capital, mission-aligned grants, and revenue from users — yes. Growth equity that needs a 10x in five years — no.
- Transparency over PR. Decisions are explained in public, including the bad ones. Audits of the mission-lock are published.
- Open standards over walled gardens. We commit to interoperability, even when it costs us lock-in revenue.
- User-first, always. Not "balanced with business needs." First. Where the two conflict, users win.
Mission-lock is not extraction-lock
A fair criticism of "we'll never IPO" is that it can read as walling the most valuable consumer companies off from ordinary people, leaving the upside with insiders and the already-wealthy.
That isn't what we're committing to. A mission-locked structure can still:
What's compatible with the pledge
- Listing publicly as a public-benefit corp with users named as the legal beneficiary.
- Sharing equity with employees, a worker cooperative, or a user community trust.
- Paying revenue dividends to users, communities, or affected groups.
What we refuse is the legal subordination of users to shareholders — not the participation of ordinary people in any upside. If a project ever becomes valuable, broad participation in that value is in scope; control by extraction-driven owners is not.
How this is enforced
- Every ez2bg-affiliated entity, from incorporation.
- Every contributor's license, which references this charter.
- Every Seal of Approval recipient — losing the seal is the consequence of violation.
- Future leadership, via charter clauses that make repealing the pledge a supermajority decision of the user community, not the operators.
The pledge is not a marketing line. It is the architecture.