it can be done

We’re up to something meaningful. Whatever we decide to do, we aim to be the world’s best at it. Period. We want to push the boundaries of what’s possible and proudly go where no one else has gone before.

We hire for 1. culture fit, 2. smartness, and 3. skillset. Always and exclusively in that order. The economic and social cost of people who are bad for our teams is generally vastly underestimated. A single disruptor - loud, unreliable, mansplaining, etc. - can bring down a whole team of outstanding people. The supposed efficiency gains »brilliant assholes« bring are a lie anyway. Enough of that. We never compromise on the people we spend most of our awake time with.

Work fills all the time we give it, says Parkinson. Work always needs more time than initially estimated - says everyone who ever worked on a project. The scarcest one of our resources, time, is too important to be dealt with carelessly. We refuse to enter the deadly cycle of jumping from missed deadline to missed deadline. Instead, we put firm time limits on everything we want to do. Call it defining appetite. Call it whatever. The point is: We might adjust the scope of what we do, but we won’t get lost in running late on everything.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and creativity results from deliberate limits. We’re intentionally frugal wherever we can to be able to be generous where we want it to be. It’s right. It’s fair. It’s sustainable.

There are very few thoughts others haven’t already thought before us, and there are very few problems others haven’t solved before us. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants, gratefully building upon others’ work. We shape, apply, and modify. We acknowledge: We stretch to do what's never been done before.

Purpose is a strained word. Purpose is not a retreat in Bali. Purpose is having sold a result of your work that improves your customer’s life. Purpose is a genuine smile on a Zoom call and an exceeded expectation. A stable and secure income to rely on. It is a stressful phase but with an end date. A benevolent space to fail and grow again. The moment you add the last puzzle piece. Purpose is the warm feeling of having achieved something you never thought you‘d ever be able to. Purpose is a Sunday night you‘re not thinking about work - or if you do, it just feels good.

Our mantra is Do. Revise. Create something. Do it all over again. Never settle with version one. Revise. Do not settle with version two. Revise. Do not let your pride in the effort you put into something prevent you from creating something better. Revise. And every hundred iterations, look back. Be impressed by your growth. Smile. Burn down what you achieved. And go again. Do. Revise. Do. Revise.

One should be scared of people with immediate answers to complex problems. Innovation requires deep thinking, and depth requires time. Only moving along the beaten path may be quick. Our strength is admitting the question marks in moments when we intentionally leave behind the known.

The powers of a well-told story can change just about anything. Stories stick. Stories engage. Stories sell. We study the ingredients and rhythms of good stories and aim to become the best storytellers in our space.

Making promises without being able to keep them. Complying with an unreasonable request because it’s easier than going into a rough discussion. Not sticking to an agreement because nobody else speaks up in a meeting either. The root cause for degrading company culture is a lack of discipline in sticking to your own principles. It’s the understandable wish to avoid short-term pain, delaying it to an undefined moment far away. We want to do better, so we hold each other accountable.

The team is always more important than the idea. A great team with a bad idea can turn around and pivot into something extraordinary. However, a great idea with a mediocre team will end up with nothing meaningful.

We are the first ones to make a start. The first to follow up. The first ones to offer help and speak up. The first ones to move. The first to enter undiscovered territory. Because the world belongs to the ones who move first.

When everything’s an option, nothing is. We unlock creativity, productivity, and delivery by defining what we will not do. Ruling out possibilities early on creates clarity and room for what matters.

We acknowledge that there will never be perfect timing, enough resources, or an ideal environment. We go anyway.

We do not believe in an ideology where you need to balance supposedly lousy conditions at work with “life”. We believe in a company structure that gives each employee so much personal responsibility, flexibility, and autonomy that working hours are neither toxic nor in need of an antidote. We don’t revere overtime. We believe in clear cuts and the value of being truly offline when off work.

We aim for exponential growth. Exponential growth in joy of use of our product. In innovation. In quality. In clients. In revenue. Not exponential growth in employees, titles, hierarchy, or venture capital debt. We will achieve our goals because we are lean and frugal, not despite of this fact. The restrictions we impose on ourselves unleash the creativity to achieve disproportionately more.

How a company is structured is reflected in the products they ship. One can spot the mega-corp or the indy hacker behind a software tool. The innovation leader or the dinosaur when calling a hotline. The hostile stakeholders of different departments on a screen interface brimming with uselessness and confusing beigeness. We are well aware: The success of what we build starts with how we build it.