Some post-its from our brainstorming session on our values
In 2013, we took our first attempt at defining what we do and how we’re going to do it. At that point our full-time team consisted of only two people: my co-founder Antti and myself. A lot has changed since then: our product and business model have gone through many modifications, and our team has grown to nine people. We realized that it was time to revisit the subject.
We believe that the vision, mission and values of a company are not something that should be defined by management. That kind of approach leads to them being treated as marketing BS: fancy words that don’t really mean anything, and don’t have anything to do with how the company actually operates.
Instead, we wanted to engage the whole team in the discussion, to find a shared understanding of our goals and the things we believe in. To me, this is a prerequisite for being able to work together effectively as a team. Everyone needs to believe in what we do and agree on the direction we’re headed.
After multiple fruitful discussions, this is what we came up with. There are many similarities with our previous thoughts from 2013, but also many fresh additions. I’m proud to present: Sharetribe’s vision, mission and values.
Vision
We want to change the way people purchase and possess physical and digital goods, services and spaces.
Vision is where it all starts. It is the long-term goal of our company: the change we want to bring to the world, the ultimate problem we want to solve. As we see it, almost everything else in our business (what we do and how we do it) can change, but no matter how many pivots we go through, the vision is likely to remain the same.
This has been the underlying goal we’ve been working towards from the beginning of this company. We believe that the future of our economy is networked and collaborative: more and more people are buying goods and services directly from each other, bypassing middlemen, and co-using and reusing their existing assets. This is a change for the better: it’s better for the planet, for the society, and for the individual. We exist to accelerate and empower this change.
Mission
We make it easy and affordable for collaborative economy entrepreneurs around the world to create and run their own online marketplace.
There are different ways to understand the word “mission”. To us, it answers a simple question: what is it we do? While vision is the change we want to see, mission is the way to get there.
Why this exact choice of words? Let’s break it down.
- Online marketplaces. Our new collaborative economy is largely powered by online marketplaces, where multiple small providers pool their resources together to be accessed easily. These marketplaces make it all possible, and that’s where our expertise lies.
- Easy. Our key value proposition is that it’s now possible for anyone to create their own online marketplace, without any technical skills. We believe this is the best approach to really scale peer-to-peer commerce: by enabling anyone to quickly start new initiatives.
- Affordable. To make our technology accessible to anyone, it’s not enough to make it easy. It also needs to be affordable. By automating every part of our process, we can minimize the amount of manual labor needed for creating a marketplace, which allows us to keep our costs low.
- Entrepreneurs. This is the best word to describe the target group for our product. Our clients are people who are passionate about helping others sell or rent products, spaces and services more efficiently, and they are committed to building their own businesses around that.
- Around the world. We want to make a global impact. The collaborative economy is not a western phenomenon: it touches every part of the world.
- Create and run. Creating the site is not enough. The value we provide does not stop there – that’s just the beginning. We help the entrepreneurs we work with to run their marketplace, to grow it, and to make it a success. We’ll be there with them, as partners, all the way through their journey.
Our vision and mission can also be combined into a single sentence:
We want to change the way people purchase and possess physical and digital goods, services and spaces by making it easy and affordable for collaborative economy entrepreneurs around the world to create and run their own online marketplace.
Values
Values are the underlying principles guiding all our actions. Whenever we make a decision, we should automatically consider whether that decision is in conflict with one of our values. If it is, that’s a huge red flag.
In the first iteration, we came up with 5 values. Now there are 9. The familiar ideas of sustainability, transparency and being equitable are still there, but formatted a bit differently – and there are a bunch of new ideas to accompany them. Here they are.
- Prioritize customer happiness. Our customers are our partners. We can only be successful if they are. We cannot be happy if they are not. We exist to help them follow their dreams. We constantly find new ways to delight them and to make their lives better.
- Be honest and fair. The key in building a successful workplace community is trust. The key in achieving trust is being transparent, treating everyone equally and saying what you really think.
- Be kind. Kindness is contagious. Human communication can be challenging, but many of the challenges can be avoided by maintaining a friendly and positive attitude. If you smile at them, they will soon smile back to you. Be honest, but be nice.
- Strive for positive impact. The purpose of our company is not just making money for the shareholders. We want to make the world a better place. The actions of our company should have a net-positive impact on the environment and the society.
- Encourage experiments. You never know what the next big thing will be. To truly innovate, you need to dedicate enough time to experiment with something new, even if the results are unclear. We encourage everyone on our team to undertake these experiments. We celebrate failure, because it’s a path to something new and better.
- Always ask why. Everything we do, we do for a reason. Before starting something, we always ask how that particular thing will help us achieve our goals. There’s always more possibilities than there is time, so it’s important to know when to say “no”.
- Embrace personal learning. While we work together for our common goals, we also empower everyone in our team to achieve their personal goals. Life is more meaningful when you’re constantly trying and learning new things.
- Finish things. It’s better to do fewer things but to do them well, and get them done before moving on to the next thing. We always invest in quality over quantity.
- Have balance. Life is meant to be enjoyed. While we are passionate about our work, it’s vital to remember to give enough time to all the other important things out there. If there is something you always wanted to do, the right time to do it is now. It’s later than you think.
Conclusion
Defining our vision, mission and values is an iterative process, so they are likely to be refined over time. However, right now we’re pretty happy with the results. Thanks to the thoughtwork we put in, we now have a shared way of working together. What’s yours?
