We are in the earliest days of defining who we are, what we believe in, and why we exist. As a consequence, it is important to explicitly outline our core values and operating principles and elevate the pillars that will define the culture we consciously and subconsciously build in this chapter of growth. We seek to build a culture of warmth, supportiveness, low ego, intentionality, sound logic, and urgency for our mission. As our story unfolds, we will re-evaluate whether these pillars continue to serve new chapters.
Our desire to help our users catalyzed this company’s reason for being*;* we don’t believe that access to the tools that enable financial freedom should be a privilege. The unfortunate reality is: the majority of Americans are underserved by a financial industry that caters to the wealthy. We want individuals and households to feel empowered and smart. We seek to return a few hours of stress-free time to families across America and provide the security of knowing that they can live the beautiful lives they dream of, whatever they may be. In order to serve the largest number of future users, we owe it to them to build a sustainably scalable company.
We believe that transparency is a foundation for trust, understanding, and empowerment. As a company, we seek to empower our team members with the context for each individual to effectively build and make decisions as true owners of the problem and company; we want team members who’d rather have the responsibility to decide what to absorb (especially since they’re so curious), than have the company be responsible for deciding what information to share. As a product offering, we similarly seek to create unique transparency for our users to further empower their decision making as an individual, member of a household, or family. We seek to provide as much information as desired, and be open about our incentives and the financial industries incentives.
We’re a team of folks who seek to be known as being actively inclusive and kind: that means we go out of our way to take care of each other as team members, of our community, and of our users. Kindness can mean many different things: whether it is deeply caring for each other as beings, getting to know each other’s families, being timely and thoughtful about delivering feedback, assuming good intent during conflict, being forgiving when receiving a genuine apology, or more.
There will be many things that we will accomplish (individually and together) for the ‘first time’. We seek to embrace the natural discomfort of newness and meet it with active reflection and an eager desire to grow, knowing that this will make us stronger and that it will be easier next time. We believe that motion is not movement; we believe in slowing down for active reflection to enable moving faster and farther down the road. If we learn more from each experience, this unlocks and maximizes growth; we aspire for our rate of learning to be a key differentiator in our ability to create a world with Plenty.
While we may be humble in the ways we work, we are ambitious in creating the world we believe needs to exist. We are a team of roll-up-our-sleeves, do-whatever-is-necessary folks. We seek to create a low ego environment to build a team that’s stronger together than individually. We’re not a good home for brilliant jerks and believe strongly in the African proverb: “If you want to get somewhere fast, go alone. If you want to go the distance, take a team.” We have a long way to go to create the future we want, and it’ll take a team to get there.
At Plenty, we have a lot to achieve to make our vision of the world a reality. As a team, we work hard and build quickly. We believe in balancing that with having fun and enjoying the journey (whatever that may mean to each team member!). We’re running a marathon, but there’s no reason to not take in the natural beauty all around us and be grateful for the privilege we have to take on this problem. For our users, we aim to take care of the “how” so our users can focus on the “what” and they can live as beautiful a life as they can dream: with financial realities not being a limiter.