What is a "mission lock"?
Hey all, this is Liz. (If we haven't met, more on me below. Welcome!) I'd like to answer this question with a different question.
What is the purpose of venture capital? What is the purpose of entrepreneurship?
I got into it believing venture capital to be a path to change things. A lot of us got into our work -- whether venture investing, starting a company, or joining an early stage company -- because we wanted to see things change. Indeed, many healthcare venture capitalists tell me that they are impact investors.
I'd love this to be true, but I've found the reality to be a little less aspirational. The purpose of venture capital is to maximize its own returns.
I've been amazed at what we're willing to trade off to achieve those returns.
Which leads me at last to the answer to your question:
A "mission lock" is a way for an organization to lock in its focus on its mission. Because to achieve impact, intention matters, but so does structure. Mission locks, whether they are corporate forms, governance structures, or cultural norms, ensure that as a company grows and changes it has the right and expectation to pour entrepreneurial creativity and resources towards its vision, its impact, its reason for being.
Collective Understanding: Our Foundations
We know that “impact” can mean many things. Every company creates an ecosystem that it impacts. That ecosystem can include our customers, our employees, our partners, our communities, our environment, as well as our end beneficiaries (be they patients, clinicians, caregivers, or others).
We believe the health of that ecosystem is critical to a company's success. We believe this is especially true in healthcare.
We understand that impact is more than a mission statement written on the wall – it is defined by our decisions, big and small.
We believe that when we align our businesses and investments with the impact we seek, we create the foundation for sustainable success – and contribute to the health and care ecosystem that our society needs.
Liz Rockett, Founder
Liz is a venture capital investor and was an early member of the impact investing industry. Her experience in the healthcare industry and private capital markets over the past two decades have informed her understanding of the perils and possibilities of American capitalism. She is a Senior Advisor at Unseen Capital, professional faculty in the Sustainable and Impact Finance program at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and serves on the investment committee of Acumen West Africa.
Liz was previously Managing Director of Kaiser Permanente Ventures, where she pioneered the firm's investment in social enterprises, aligning the investment strategy more closely with the non-profit mission of Kaiser Permanente. Liz led KP Ventures' investments in Big Health, Groups Recover Together, Everytable, and DexCare. She served on the boards of Big Health, Everytable, KitCheck, OssoVR, as an observer to the board of Groups, DexCare, and Omada, and as a member of the investment committee for Rock Health.
Prior to KP Ventures, Liz built the health impact investing practice for Imprint Capital, acquired by Goldman Sachs. She spent an interim year between Imprint and KPV helping Acumen design Acumen America and supporting the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's early impact investing interests.
Liz gained operating experience in digital health before it was digital health: at Outcome (acquired by Quintiles), the Advisory Board Company (acquired by Optum), and TriZetto (acquired by Cognizant).
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