Our principles
Seven principles
An aim for how we work.
We aim to work by seven principles: Truth, Honesty, Integrity, Humanity, Faith, Innovation, and The Next Person.
Explore the principlesWe aim to work by seven principles:
Truth. Honesty. Integrity. Humanity. Faith. Innovation. The Next Person.
They are not a claim that we always get things right.
They are what we want to return to when the answer is unclear, when a decision is uncomfortable, when something fails, or when the easier choice is not necessarily the better one.
A principle matters most when it costs something to follow it.
TRUTH
Start with what is real.
Truth is not always convenient.
Sometimes the evidence disagrees with what we hoped would happen. Sometimes an idea we believed in does not work. Sometimes the answer changes when we learn something new.
We want to be willing to see that.
Truth means asking what is actually happening before deciding what we wish were happening.
It means being willing to question our own assumptions.
And when the truth changes what we should do, we should be willing to change with it.
The truth does not become less important because it is difficult to hear.
HONESTY
Say what we know. Say what we do not.
There is a difference between having an answer and pretending to have one.
We do not want uncertainty hidden behind confident language.
If something worked, say so.
If it failed, say that too.
If we do not know, "we do not know yet" is a perfectly useful answer.
Honesty gives another person enough of the real picture to make their own decision.
That includes the mistakes, limitations, unfinished questions, and things we would do differently.
Because hiding the failure also hides the lesson.
INTEGRITY
Try to make our choices match what we say matters.
Principles are easy when nothing is at stake.
Integrity becomes important when following them is slower, harder, less profitable, or less convenient.
It asks whether the decision we make in private resembles the one we would be comfortable explaining in public.
We will not always make the right choice.
But when our actions drift away from the things we say we believe, we should notice it, admit it, and correct course.
What we do should mean more than what we say.
HUMANITY
Never lose sight of the person.
Technology can make almost anything sound like a system.
Users. Inputs. Outputs. Metrics. Cases. Data.
But somewhere on the other side of all of that is a person.
Someone who may be tired.
Someone who may be overwhelmed.
Someone trying something for the first time.
Someone living with limitations we cannot see.
Someone simply hoping the thing in front of them will make their day a little easier instead of a little harder.
We want the human outcome to matter more than the elegance of the technology behind it.
If the technology succeeds and the person does not, we have missed something important.
FAITH
Leave room for hope when certainty runs out.
Not every worthwhile thing begins with proof that it will succeed.
Sometimes we have to begin because we believe something could be better.
Faith, to us, does not mean pretending uncertainty is certainty.
It means accepting that uncertainty exists and choosing not to let it end the question.
It is the willingness to keep looking for a way forward when the path is not obvious yet.
To believe people can learn.
That ideas can grow.
That tomorrow does not have to repeat everything that came before it.
Sometimes hope is enough to take the next step.
INNOVATION
Look for a better way, not simply a newer one.
New does not automatically mean useful.
More complicated does not automatically mean better.
And technology does not deserve a place in someone's life just because we can build it.
Innovation begins with a question:
Could there be a better way to do this?
Maybe the answer is a new tool.
Maybe it is a simpler process.
Maybe it is removing something that never needed to be there.
We want innovation to reduce unnecessary complexity and expand what a person can do—not create novelty for its own sake.
The best innovation may be the thing that makes the technology itself feel smaller.
What the principles are for
These principles are not decoration for a wall.
They are questions we want our work to survive.
Is it true?
Are we being honest about what we know?
Does what we are doing match what we say matters?
What happens to the person on the other side of this decision?
Can we keep hope without pretending certainty?
Is there a genuinely better way?
And what are we leaving for the person who comes next?
We will not always answer them perfectly.
But we intend to keep asking.
Because the kind of future we leave behind will be shaped, in part, by the choices we make while building it.
And the next person deserves our best effort.