Aloha,
I’ve heard it said that culture consumes process - I believe that to be true - and if you don’t build culture, you risk being consumed by the process. If you don’t build your company culture with who you want to be from the beginning - it seems pretty likely that you will be defined by other things - the market, your investors, the people you hire, the demands of business in general.
I really don’t want that to happen with Iwahai or VoiceMarkr. It’s one of the reasons I waited so long to partner up with a co-founder. I wanted to understand the vision I had of the future, so that I could share it. I wanted to make sure that my co-founder and I were partners in working towards a shared vision. The same will be true of our first hires, our investors, and with any luck - every business decision we make along the way.
So what kind of vision am I talking about? What kind of company culture am I envisioning? I’d love to share that with you.
First and foremost - Iwahai will not be driven by capitalization. What that means is that we are not going to let investment tell us what our destination is or how to get there. We seek to have partners who share our vision of where we are going and we are open to discussions about what the best way to get there is - but when I look at companies like Facebook and Google, I see that they allowed the potential for profits to destroy their vision. Nowhere has that been more clear to me than in the rollout and failure of the Google social platform Google+.
For those who don’t remember, Google+ was revolutionary. It allowed you to create ‘circles’ of friends rather than one big ‘friends’ list. You could have your tech friends in one circle, your family in another, and your literary friends in a third - with no limits. The result was that you could share something to a circle, a subset of your friends, without having to share it with your other circles. It was revolutionary and it needed just one thing to work. Real names. It simply wouldn’t work if your Aunt Sally could pretend to be a different person and get access to your literary work when you wanted to keep her away from it in the family circle.
Forcing users to dox themselves caused a stir. There were groups that complained. Advertisers balked at the controversy. And Google blinked. Then they agreed to get rid of the real names policy. Then, Google+ was pretty much just like Facebook or Twitter or dozens of other new social platforms - and another of the revolutionary features - amazing photo sharing ability - was quickly copied and improved upon by the startup Instagram which Facebook snapped up. Then, Google+ failed - there was no way it couldn’t fail.
We have a few ideals that are important to us here at Iwahai which we won’t give up on.
Data Security. The first is that we don’t believe in exploitive capitalism or being driven by advertiser morality. We will not exploit user data or compromise our desire to protect users in order to make a profit. Period. We believe in protecting user data. It’s a core principle of our platform. It’s one of the reasons why we are doing a complete rebuild at the moment - so that we can offer greater protection to anyone who creates or listens to a Voicemarkr.
Smart Work. We believe in working smarter, not working harder. Hard work is necessary and should be celebrated but the current ethos of tech companies where employees work 50-hour weeks (or more) and then are expected to put in more time - often unpaid, we don’t want that. In fact, we want to work hard now - build a beautiful framework, develop timeless processes, and then work on other things. We want our team and our employees to eventually be among those who work the least in the industry - while still getting more done before breakfast than most teams accomplish in a week. Smart work that accomplishes the same result should earn the same pay as hard work that takes far longer.
Global Responsibility. Our journey is just getting started but we want to begin with the concept of a greater responsibility. We are responsible for the entire planet, all people, and the future. That’s a huge responsibility. As such, we want to make sure that we aren’t messing things up - and we want to make sure that we are fixing things when we can - because we can. That’s why we are working hard to set up an oversight board of global responsibility. We are reaching out to leaders in ecology, futurism, humanitarian, and public health leaders to advise us and to keep us accountable. We are also starting to build the partnerships that we hope will allow us to channel any success we find into making the world a better place.
Innovation in Governance and Finance. The old models are broken. Just look at the news, look out the window, or think about your job, your taxes, your government. It’s clear to everyone but none of us know how to fix it. We aim to be part of the solution. That’s the reason why we are constantly exploring new models like operating as a holacracy, structuring our business as a decentralized cooperative organization, or even partnering with visionary leaders in blockchain, cryptocurrency, or decentralized autonomous organizations in the fintech space. We don’t know what the best model for the future is - but we are exploring these and many other options so that we can be a part of the solution.
Discovery, Music, Connection. When it comes down to it - our platform is all about fun. The fun of discovering new things, sharing them, or finding joy in unexpected places. We are a map platform - and what else symbolizes discovery more than a map. Remember treasure hunts and pirate maps as a child? We are also a sound platform and we want and hope that at some point - musicians and music fans will be using our platform to share music that holds specific meaning in specific places. We are a connection platform and we are working hard (and smart) to deliver new ways that you can connect with the people that matter to you - and the people who will matter to you - once you get to know them.
We are really looking forward to being able to share all of this with you and to building a responsible, innovative, and disruptive company that makes the world a better place. Thank you for being on this journey with us.
I hope you all have a wonderful week.
Christopher Damitio
CEO - Iwahai, Inc.
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