It will probably be at least a few years before Hampton Creek, the plant-based food startup known for its vegan mayo , goes public. But founder Josh Tetrick already has plans for doing good with the money he makes when that happens.

“The idea that I could use whatever personal wealth that I might accrue from this to also do good . . that’s what I want to do with my life.”

“The whole company is based around using capitalism to make things a bit better,” says Tetrick. “The idea that I could use whatever personal wealth that I might accrue from this to also do good . . . that’s what I want to do with my life.”

Tetrick is one of around 200 founders to take the Founders Pledge, a legally binding contract that says when a founder exits their company, they’ll give at least 2% of the proceeds to charity (some pledge as much as 25%).

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The pledge, part of the U.K.-based nonprofit Founders Forum for Good, started after director David Goldberg had run another program giving money away to social entrepreneurs in the tech space. Many of them, unfortunately, weren’t great at running businesses. So he decided to shift tactics.

“The thinking behind Founders Pledge was, if we can’t help the people who care most be better at being businesspeople, why don’t we help the best commercial entrepreneurs be more socially responsible?” Goldberg says. “It was really just sort of flipping the equation on its head and saying, let’s work with a different caliber of entrepreneurs, and make it really easy for them to give back and do good.”

A handful, like Tetrick, also happen to run socially minded businesses. But most just have thriving startups. “We kept seeing entrepreneurs selling their businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars, and then not having any clue what to do with it,” Goldberg says.

Most do give away at least some of their money, for tax reasons if nothing else. But Goldberg realized that they could do it in a more strategic way—using the principles of effective altruism to support the nonprofits that can help the most people—and that they could start thinking about it earlier.