People have been told for ages to not care about their job, customers, and their employees, and care only about numbers. We exist in a corporate manufacturing mindset for too long.

I want to share my experience of the exceptional that will push you to reconsider your company culture or advocate for significant changes.

When I was looking for a new position a few years ago, I was imagining a company with the values that I have never met before working with other startups from Prague, Moscow, London, and Vienna for a quite long time.

I had about 15 interviews with different startups in Prague and abroad. Looking for the "aha" feeling about the company culture and communication, after all other requirements were met.

I found a Content Producer role at Superface that wasn't really suitable for me since I was looking for a Marketing Manager position. Nevertheless, I still applied, knowing that my chance to get the role is quite low. I just loved how the job description sounded like and company values that were mentioned there.

And then I had a few calls with Radek, CEO & Co-founder at Superface, I was immediately certain that we had a connection after the first interview. After a few more interviews and knowledge/creativity test, I got an email from Radek that I didn't really match with the required position, but he came up with a new position especially for me. I was shocked!

I was truly impressed by the open-mindedness of the CEO and his approach. Since then, Superface team never stopped surprising me (in a good way 😄). During almost a year and half, I discovered even more about the Superpeople and the company values, and now I want to share it with you. My main goal is to share with you something unique that is not common in the Czech startup scene. Maybe it can inspire you and your team too!

Core values, vision, mission 💙🚀

The values established by any company are not just a set of rules, but those tools that can be applied in practice. These are the main principles that are used when interacting with other companies, customers and employees.

Both employees and customers always prefer to work with companies whose values are the same as their own. This makes the task of setting values an important factor in driving customer relations and attracting the best talents.

At the same time, the vision and mission statements define the purpose of the company and inspire a sense of belonging and identity to the employees.

✨ What is our vision?

We are the creator of and navigator in the universe of capabilities.

All the mankind capabilities accessible to AI (programmatically) without the need for human intervention.

✨ What is our mission?

We shape the digital business

• We enable business to happen digitally
• We democratize the markets
• We are the new way of business-making
• We empower developers
• We make business accessible to AI

💫 What are the core values at Superface?

Clarity of communication. Transparency in communication is essential. To cultivate a healthy workspace, it's influential to build a trustworthy environment first, where people can share their ideas, concerns, and feedback without the slightest hesitation.

Trust and honesty. No dogmas. These are crucial when working together towards the same objectives. It keeps the team motivated during challenging times. Errors are inevitable. The key is to speak up to it and do your best to fix it.

Autonomy and freedom. When people are not given freedom in their daily work-life, it usually decreases the motivation and happiness of employees in a long run. Nowadays, there is a growing demand for independence and flexibility in the workspace that causes companies to break their old patterns of managing company and people. Bring up freedom and trust to the table!

Clear ownership and competency. When you let your employees take ownership of their work, they treat the project they are working for — and its money — as if it were their own.

Equal treatment. Diversity and inclusion is a key to the efficient work and development of the team.

No intolerance, no harassment. Any kind of intolerance or harassment are unacceptable in the workplace.

It has to be fun. After all, we are all humans --- not machines. Having fun activities as a team always increases the team happiness. Team buildings, one-on-one sessions, coffee breaks, anything that can can give additional value to your employees, will be the best to try out.

Customer-oriented. Businesses exist to satisfy interests and needs of the customers. We also love our customers and treat them with the good intentions. 💙

Your values reflect your business beliefs, principles, and decisions that determine who you are as a company.

All these values that cultivate happiness are so important in our daily work-lives, as we spend so much time at work. Choose the right values to make your team happier, productive and successful. 😎

At Superface, we have a policy of transparency, openness, and trust. We believe that our people develop relationships based on trust with their peers and leaders, which causes the company to excel. As a result, our team has more flexibility, and they are motivated since they know they aren't just working for a company, but rather they work to make an impact.

If you want to explore more about company values, take a look at the Twilio's CEO and Co-Founder Jeff Lawson, who had a speech a few years ago about company values and why businesses require a strong culture.

Twilio’s CEO and Co-Founder Jeff Lawson on Company Values

Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.

— Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

🚀 A bit about Superface

A framework for API integrations. Superface allows developers to build better applications and use more APIs.

It's a language and protocol for abstracting integrations to application use cases.

Yes, if you don't have a programming background, this might sound too much 🤯 but share it with your dev team, and they might love it!

Superface allows use case discovery and distribution of integration code at runtime.

What are the use cases we have?

Ready-made solutions: geolocation, geocoding, SMS, image processing, NLP, analytics, crypto exchange, email, weather, social media, CRM, and any other solutions can be generated with [Integration designer (coming soon).

See in action at superface.ai and check out the geocode integrations.

What can you do now?

If you've never taken the time to establish a clear set of values, this might be the right time to do just that. If you're already doing this in your company, evaluate how effective they are. Are they being followed by the team and have they helped your company reach its goals? Regardless of where you are on the values spectrum, it's important to occasionally reflect on these issues to determine whether what you're doing is working.

Even if it's not going to be an exact listing of values, don't be afraid to share your ideas with the rest of your team. As you grow, it will provide guidance along your journey and help to define who you are as a company.

Join our journey on Discord, Twitter and here at Dev. We're soon going to announce more exciting news!