Purpose Before Profit: Jesse Hassinger Of Hustle On The Benefits Of Running A Purpose-Driven Business
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
The biggest reason we pursued employee ownership was to better align the mission and values of Hustle with the customers we’ve always served and the employees who serve them.
In today’s competitive business landscape, the race for profits often takes center stage. However, there are some leaders who also prioritize a mission-driven purpose. They use their business to make a positive social impact and recognize that success isn’t only about making money. In this interview series, we are talking with some of these distinct leaders and I had the pleasure of interviewing Jesse Hassinger.
Jesse Hassinger became CEO of Hustle in February 2025, bringing nearly a decade of institutional knowledge and a deep commitment to the communities Hustle was built to serve. Hustle is an employee-owned mobile messaging platform built on the belief that human connection drives action. Since pioneering peer-to-peer texting with the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015, Hustle has powered over 1 billion conversations for progressive campaigns, labor organizations, nonprofits, educational institutions and mission-driven businesses across North America. Today, the all-in-one platform offers P2P and Broadcast texting, video and voice communications — everything organizations need to reach people where they are. Jesse joined Hustle in 2017 after six years working on and managing progressive political and advocacy campaigns across New York, Maryland and Colorado. Over his tenure at Hustle, he has held roles spanning customer support and product development — including leading the support team through the 2020 election season — giving him an unusually grounded understanding of how campaigns and mission-driven organizations use the platform in practice. Born in Manhattan, raised in Baltimore and now rooted in Oakland, Jesse became the odd one out of his family by not pursuing a career in the arts.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us your “Origin Story”? Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I grew up on Long Island before moving to Baltimore when I was seven — my mom got a job at the Maryland Institute College of Art. I went to City for high school, which means something to people who live there (go Knights!), and then on to Yale to study economics. I loved my time there, especially the courses and the people I came up with in my residential college.
After graduating, I didn’t have a strong sense of what I wanted to do. My coursework would have aligned with a career at a global NGO or the UN, but after my studies, I realized I had an academic interest in the field more than a true passion for it. Around that time, a friend invited me to work on the reelection campaign for the mayor of New Haven. Politics had always been a passion of mine, so I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to explore. That’s how I started a career in politics that eventually brought me to Hustle, the mobile messaging platform that pioneered peer-to-peer (P2P) texting for mission-driven organizations.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
Navigating the employee purchase of Hustle and the subsequent distribution of ownership to individual employees was unlike anything I’d experienced before — and apparently unlike anything our legal counsel had experienced either. In May of 2026, Hustle employees purchased the company from its previous owner. We had numerous conversations with attorneys who remarked that in decades of practice, they had never worked on anything quite like this.
The situation is rare on several levels. First, employees purchasing the company outright is unusual in itself. But what we’re especially proud of is how we distributed ownership afterward. In a typical startup, the equity distribution between founders and newer employees might be 500-to-1. At Hustle, it’s more like 4-to-1. That last detail matters enormously to us.
We often learn the most from our mistakes. Can you share one that you made that turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned?
Two concepts have come to define my thinking, both personally and professionally: dosage and circumstance.
In my personal life, I’m often complimented for my patience. In my professional life, I’ve experienced how that same patience — taking more time to make decisions — has at times had adverse impacts on me and the business. The lesson is to really understand how the circumstances of a situation should influence how you act. Something that makes you strong in one context can be the very thing that holds you back in another.
Dosage pairs naturally with that. It’s a theory of tolerance: in some contexts, a little of something is good for you and a lot of the same thing is harmful. Think about drinking water or sitting in the sun — too much water and you drown, too much sun and you burn. It doesn’t mean you avoid these things. In fact, you need some amount of them. There’s probably a very short list of things you should avoid entirely.
In a professional context, this applies directly to how people tolerate the demands of work and the stress that creates. Recognizing that there’s an appropriate dosage of work stress — and therefore an appropriate amount of recovery from that stress — has shaped our company policy. It’s part of why we offer a sabbatical program for tenured employees, where they take six weeks away every few years, on top of unlimited PTO and paid sick leave available to everyone. Dosage.
As a successful leader, it’s clear that you uphold strong core values. I’m curious what are the most important principles you firmly stand by and refuse to compromise on. Can you share a few of them and explain why they hold such significance for you in your work and life?
After more than a decade of leading teams, the core principle I’ve carried with me is creating alignment. Better alignment generates better outcomes for everyone involved. If an employee is working on something that helps them grow in their career, and the organization is working on something that advances its mission, and that mission is aligned with the needs of the people it serves, you have a solid foundation. Misalignment can creep in at any point in that chain, and it requires real discipline to maintain.
The biggest reason we pursued employee ownership was to better align the mission and values of Hustle with the customers we’ve always served and the employees who serve them.
A related observation I’ve carried across teams is the importance of understanding the core purpose of a resource and what it’s actually capable of accomplishing. Organizations tend to have a clear understanding of the problems they have, but not always a clear sense of how to solve them. And even when they do, they sometimes allocate the wrong resource to the problem or misunderstand what that resource can do. A simple example from our work at Hustle: does receiving a text message intrinsically change anyone’s mind? Not necessarily. But can a genuine conversation that takes place over text change minds? Absolutely. I often tell customers that texting is magical, but it is not literally magic. Creating that shared understanding with customers is a crucial step in the work we do together.
What inspired you to start a purpose-driven business rather than a traditional for-profit enterprise? Can you share a personal story or experience that led you to prioritize social impact in your business?
I didn’t start Hustle, but I was an early employee. Hustle was founded by people who observed through their work on immigration reform that the most effective way to engage supporters was through conversation over text. At the time, the only way to do that was by using a personal phone and copying and pasting messages one by one, changing details like the supporter’s name each time. Making that process easier for a team of volunteers was where Hustle got its start.
From there, the 2016 election created a remarkable early test case. You had these large and active volunteer communities organizing on behalf of candidates, and the stars aligned when organizers on the Bernie Sanders campaign experimented with texting young people and college students instead of calling them. The rest, as they say, is history.
For me personally, building community has always been a through-line. My career before Hustle included time as a community organizer and a stint with AmeriCorps. Joining a team working toward that same objective felt like a natural fit, and it still does.
Can you help articulate a few of the benefits of leading a purpose-driven business rather than a standard “plain vanilla” business?
People are always looking for meaning in their lives. What’s great about a purpose-driven organization is that it can blend a personal sense of meaning and fulfillment with professional life. Plenty of people draw meaning from their careers, and plenty don’t, which is completely fine. But for someone who wants to align their professional work with something personally meaningful, a purpose-driven organization can create a kind of harmony that I’ve found genuinely rewarding. I feel good about the work I do and the customers I serve at Hustle, and I consider it a privilege to have that opportunity.
How has your company’s mission or purpose affected its overall success? Can you explain the methods or metrics you use to evaluate the impact of this purpose-driven strategy on your organization?
It sometimes helps to understand something better by taking the inverse approach. When customers felt Hustle was not embodying the values that had attracted them to us in the first place, some left, and many who stayed expressed dissatisfaction. That told us something important: our mission and purpose are a core part of what customers believed they were purchasing. When that clarity became murky, so did their commitment to renew their business with us.
The evidence is pretty clear at this point. I can draw a straight line from our mission and values to our continued success as a business. Aligning customers with employees with the ownership of this company was a key investment we made to meet a core requirement of our customers, and it has paid off.
Can you share a pivotal moment when you realized that leading your purpose-driven company was actually making a significant impact? Can you share a specific example or story that deeply resonated with you personally?
The outpouring of support when we announced that Hustle would become employee-owned genuinely moved me. People really love this change — employees, customers, former colleagues, vendors, and in some cases, complete strangers. The enthusiasm I’ve received from people I’ve never met has been surprising and deeply gratifying. I’m humbled by the support and endorsement from the community for this new chapter.
Have you ever faced a situation where your commitment to your purpose and creating a positive social impact clashed with the profitability in your business? Have you ever been challenged by anyone on your team or have to make a tough decision that had a significant impact on finances? If so, how did you address and reconcile this conflict?
Hustle wasn’t free. Employees purchasing the company solved a significant challenge for our customers and our team, but it also means we have fewer resources to reinvest in the business. This decision was not without risk, and we will be leaning into our customers and the causes we support to continue to support us with their business. Now that we’re employee-owned and our dedication to their causes is both unambiguous and unmitigated, I see an incredible amount of opportunity for deeper partnership.
What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs who wish to start a purpose-driven business?
Answer the question: Why does your business exist? It sometimes helps to invert that and ask: What happens if your business doesn’t exist? Work backwards from there. That should ground your purpose, the needs you meet and for whom. Then it’s about the discipline not to drift too far from that foundation.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Purpose-Driven Business.” If you can, please share a story or example for each.
1. Pick your purpose. That’s the first decision you make, and almost every decision that follows will be shaped by it. In fact, many decisions will effectively be made for you once your purpose is clear.
2. Build the organization around achieving that purpose. Sometimes that means your organization will need to be small, and there is nothing wrong with that. In other cases, it means your organization might need to be enormous. If your ambition is to run a large organization, the purpose needs to be audacious enough to sustain one. Going to the moon and defeating the Nazis were both projects with a clear purpose that required large organizations to accomplish. Maintaining the community garden is a noble service to the surrounding community. It doesn’t require NASA.
3. Stay committed to the purpose. A clear purpose attracts the people you need — employees, customers, donors, even investors. It works like a magnet. Don’t lose your magnetism.
4. Be intentional about culture. Cultures happen whether you’re deliberate about them or not, so it’s better to be intentional and develop a culture that suits your purpose. This is easier when you’re starting from scratch, because culture often flows naturally from the purpose you choose. But it’s not unusual for organizations that have drifted from their purpose to find themselves wondering why everything feels different. The reason is that purpose and culture are intrinsically related and self-reinforcing. If one has drifted, the other probably has too.
5. Discipline is saying no. Not my line, but it rings very true. Shiny objects will always appear. Big opportunities will make themselves available, and you’ll tell yourself you can use them to better serve your purpose — just this once. Say no. Turning down opportunities will create friction with your team, so get comfortable with it. Stay focused and achieve your purpose.
I’m interested in how you instill a strong sense of connection with your team. How do you nurture a culture where everyone feels connected to your mission? Could you share an example or story that showcases how your purpose has positively influenced or motivated people on your team to contribute?
When new people join Hustle, they aren’t joining into a vacuum. There is a culture and a set of norms and standards already in place, and we are deeply dedicated to our interviewing process to make sure we invite people who will contribute to and strengthen that culture. We’ve been remarkably successful in this regard.
The culture here is one where people are genuinely dedicated to our customers, their causes and their missions. Our employees regularly volunteer for our customers and participate in their programming, including signing up for texting shifts on behalf of organizations we serve. They also go above and beyond in their respective roles to deliver a high standard of service because they believe in the work. The most contentious conversations we have internally are often those where we have to stop short of fully solving a problem because other urgent priorities need to be addressed first. That tension comes from caring deeply, and I’d rather have that than the alternative.
Imagine we’re sitting down together two years from now, looking back at your company’s last 24 months. What specific accomplishments would have to happen for you to be happy with your progress?
There are a lot of exciting product features we continue to make progress on. Our emphasis is on saving people time and helping them drive more participation for their causes. That’s really what we’re about. So having more visibility into that participation would be an accomplishment. Helping organizations automate more of the administrative work of launching a texting campaign, so they can focus on the conversations that matter, would be an accomplishment. But ultimately, more organizations using Hustle to advance causes they believe in. That’s the measure I care most about.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I’m not sure I’d claim to be a person of enormous influence, but I’ll play along! I’ve often said that if I won the lottery, my passion project would be school lunch. Making sure children have the right nutrition for learning is a solvable problem that doesn’t receive the attention it deserves, given how foundational it is. I’d dedicate myself to fixing that.
How can our readers further follow your work or your company online?
Subscribing to email updates from our website hustle.com and our LinkedIn are probably the best way to stay in the loop.
This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!
About The Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com
Purpose Before Profit: Jesse Hassinger Of Hustle On The Benefits Of Running A Purpose-Driven… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.