Some of the most impactful brands draw much of their power from inspiring origin stories. The ability to do good comes through most profoundly when companies are led by people who truly believe in their mission and the work they are doing – particularly those who have come up against seemingly insurmountable roadblocks, only to carry on without missing a beat.

At first blush, HumanCo founder and CEO Jason Karp wasn’t the most obvious candidate to lead a purpose-driven health food company. His Twitter bio nods to his current status as a “recovering hedge fund manager” – a smirky look back to the relentless strive for excellence that drove him, first as a kid with an entrepreneurial spirit, and later as an ambitious college athlete and finance whiz. To the extent that he thought about it at all, he assumed he was healthy – brushing aside some bad allergies, asthma and a tendency to get sick a lot.

Then in his first year as a hedge fund manager, he “fell into the same patterns as everyone else – working 14-16-hour days, eating like crap, not exercising and prioritizing work,” as he put it. “I had an overachiever mindset and got trapped in a hamster wheel of trying to be the best.” He got sicker and sicker and was finally diagnosed with degenerative corneal disease.

If he kept up the pace and lifestyle he’d adopted, doctors told him, he’d be blind by age 30. 

Suddenly, constant striving for success, happiness and wellness at the same time wasn’t feasible. Determined to find some way out of his dire diagnosis, he researched ways to improve his health and found that a lot of his problems were tied to food. With this in mind, he started an elimination diet and, within a year, had turned around his autoimmune issues and degenerative eyesight. 

This literally life-saving answer set Jason down an entirely new path, diverging from his previous asset manager course. He realized that if eating clean had helped him, it might well do the same for others.

“If food is super cheap and highly processed and made with chemicals, we need to teach people that’s not cool,” he said. “It’s not something you should aspire to consume.”

Armed with his personal experience and years of work in the finance space, he redirected his entrepreneurial energies and uncompromising standards to start HumanCo. As an investor and operator with deep experience and a proven track record, he was able to draw together an advisory board of Fortune 100 CEOs, scientists, and doctors to build a mission-driven company aimed at helping people live healthier lives. The approach was to take younger brands from ideation through to formulation, market testing, go-to-market strategy, product launch, retail expansion and scale – with a fanatical focus on food, beverage, nutrition, beauty and wellness companies representing real products with recognizable ingredients. This push, he determined, could help consumers live healthier lives, consuming products that are high-quality, high-purity and trustworthy – all while using sustainable practices that don’t harm the planet.

“It takes a village,” Jason said. “There are a lot of large companies who are sincerely changing their stripes – they genuinely want to fix it. But it’s going to take a long time and a lot of education and partnerships, because that scale and that distribution is how you get better quality food in more people’s mouths at a higher quality price.”

By building a people-first company, rooted in firsthand knowledge of the good thoughtful work can do, Jason crafted a road to business success that empowers others – and sets an admirable model for ground-up, purpose-driven work to follow.

We should all be happy that Jason was able to save his vision so the rest of us can see more clearly.