“The first thing we always look out for is does the thing you want to make actually align with the company mission. A lot of people do this but a lot of people also skip this part. If it isn't geared towards that, we're not going to do it.”

Align every feature to the mission statement before anything else — it's the fastest filter for bad ideas

Paloni's innovation framework begins with a mission-alignment gate, and she is explicit that many teams skip this step. Welltory's mission — improve people's well-being with science and technology that serves each individual personally — rules out anything unpersonalized or scientifically unsound before a single line of engineering is written. Host David Barnard adds that RevenueCat now opens every meeting with the mission statement and it took two years to stop feeling performative and start focusing decisions. A mission statement functions as a cheap pre-filter that prevents the team from building features nobody asked for.