Our values and why you should care about yours
A question we often ask in first meetings with founders, partners, or potential hires is, "How do you define your values?"
We get a surprising distribution of answers, but they generally fall into three categories. The first category improvises their values on the spot. They recognize we care about this and answer in appeasement, with general aphorisms. The second category pushes back, saying either they don’t have a set of values, or don't consider them germane to the task at hand (usually in much nicer language). The third category lights up and shares insightful values they have clearly thought very deeply about.
Values don't necessarily determine the magnitude of human commercial success, but even as a small-scale startup, strongly inform the tenor of relationships and the operations of your company.
Our values are both actual and aspirational. At are best, we are:
- Endlessly curious
- Kind, open, and direct
- Too small to specialize
- Upholding quality through authenticity
- Keeping it simple
- Giving space to good ideas
Endlessly curious
Improvement stems from curiosity. Curiosity is the approaching of hard problems not through force, but through amusement - it’s how we turn work into play.
When presented new tools, we explore their shape, utility, and construction. We perfect their use.
We optimize for speed and quality over everything and are ready to try new tools and processes if they offer potential for improvement. If they indeed offer improved speed and quality, we transition.
Kind, open, and direct
Integrity and trust is earned through consistent, open communication. We put ourselves on the line. We challenge each other through encouragement.
We share dissent constructively and with respect.
We keep professional conversations with each other or clients in public. We invest in tools such as Slack, Google Meet, and Notion to communicate about projects, within Bread, and publicly.
We prefer transparency of information whenever possible.
We do all of this while maintaining the privacy and confidentiality that every person deserves.
Too small to specialize
We are not big enough to afford specialty. All of our engineers are full-stack. All of our designers are front-end developers.
We do own writing, make our own presentations, and say yes to doing things we've never done before.
Upholding quality through authenticity
Our work is an extension of us.
We’re very rarely reinventing things. We’re in the business of refinement. We are often optimizing for time to market and process improvements over technology invention. We’re trying to help bring products into the world that are easier to use, more accessible, and more secure, using best in class tools and technology standards.
Our constraints are always time and money—we do our best work within those confines.
We are earnest and efficient with our words. If the information shared is canned, verbose, or imprecise, it will not be read.
We function through inclusivity and open-mindedness.
Keeping it simple
It’s easy to make a mess. We are obsessive to a fault about organization and simplicity. We're fine with the trade offs. We want less garbage in our world—be it digital or physical.
Everything from your Google Drive, spreadsheets, design files, codebase, and more should be thoughtfully organized. If it’s a mess, take the time to clean it up. Your work should be beautiful, and you should be proud of it.
Simple is hard. Simple doesn’t mean bare bones, lots of white space. Simple means you put thought into organizing your work so that others can digest it easily.