About
Germ Network is a California-based startup that builds secure chat software for multifaceted humans. Our name irreverently invokes a new paradigm of digital connection that prioritizes care, community, research, public health, and natural growth.
Germ is built and managed in California by two co-founders, Tessa and Mark , and sometimes some wonderful interns. We release software updates regularly and hang out in our Discord and around the Bay Area and LA.
Germ Network, Inc. is a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).
That means we are a for-profit corporation that can accept investment capital to grow our business and reward our shareholders. It also means that beyond our fiduciary, or financial, duty to our shareholders, we have chartered for ourselves a public benefit duty to “create a material positive impact on society and the environment.”
Specifically, our chosen public benefit is “to help people communicate in healthy ways, achieved by prioritizing transparency, privacy, user control, accessibility, and empathy in our products, services, governance, and partnerships.” We believe that serving this mission will lead us to build the best digital social products ever while growing a gigantic, successful business, and that this giant business will protect our ability to bring our mission to as many people as possible.
