We run our company as an idea meritocracy - a culture where meaningful relationships and work is our highest priority. It’s a system where the best ideas win because each team member seeks to continuously improve. You can learn more about it in a 15-minute TED talk from Ray Dalio.

Do what you say you are going to do

Be responsive so the team can rely on you

1. We build meaningful win-win long-term relationships with each other.
2. During our standard working hours, we expect our full-time team members to respond to:
   1. Critical messages within 1 hour on average
   2. Non-critical messages within a maximum 24 hours
3. We communicate upfront our time availability. In particular:
   1. If we can’t attend an already confirmed meeting, we communicate it at least 1 hour upfront
   2. If we are more than 2 minutes late to the confirmed meeting
      1. We expect each team member to have at most 30 minutes late time cumulatively in a given month (assuming 20 meetings in such a month).

Seek mutual understanding

• "Mutual Understanding" with others is more important than e.g ‘Good mood’, 'Fun', ‘Reaching a goal’, 'Productivity” or “Effectiveness”.
• We welcome receiving critical feedback to see ourselves more objectively.
• We focus on giving the other person the feeling that we understand them. The best way to do this is to paraphrase when we are asked to do so by the other.
• We frequently provide critical feedback to help others learn
• We build trust by talking openly about our and other people’s emotions, feelings, and needs.

Communicate in an honest and open-minded way

1. We take the path towards being successful. This might not be an easy path. And might not be a path where we insist on being right.
2. We continuously improve our character, abilities, company processes, and culture.
3. We prioritize our growth and learning over our comfort.
4. Truth (aka. accurate understanding of reality) is essential for our success. We achieve it by following scientific methods.
5. We acknowledge openly and honestly our mistakes, problems, challenges, fears, doubts, and disagreements with the team to accelerate our learning curve.

Together, we make wiser decisions

1. We sincerely believe that we might not know the best possible solution.