Over time we’ve realised that while we’re super excited about shaping the future of commerce, a big part of why people join us and stick with us is because they resonate with our way of life. You could call it work culture - but it ends up becoming more than just that.
It’s taken us time to discover and articulate what our culture feels like, this evolving document is an attempt to candidly share what it’s like working at BiteSpeed.
Our Purpose
At BiteSpeed, work is personal. You could blame this on us being existential, but most of us are spending the best years of our lives doing this and we want to be purposeful about the kind of workplace we’re trying to create. Our purpose is about why we’re here and what we care about:-
- Personal Transformation - We like to think of BiteSpeed as being a gym for our careers. It’s where we come to do great work we can be proud of and push ourselves in the pursuit of excellence. Is it comfortable? No. Is it painful? Sometimes. Is it fulfilling? Yes.
We were never the company that was supposed to win - We started out of a dorm room, solo founder, early engineers who hadn’t written code in their lives setting out to build a global SaaS company.
Our roots are in doing things we are unqualified for and we bet on people who want that journey for themselves. There are stories of people across the company from a 20 year old who’s never done sales closing enterprise deals to a college intern owning an enterprise product lifecycle - these are the stories we are proud of. If someone can look back after 2 years of working at BiteSpeed and say they don’t identify with who they were, we’d call it a success and we want to help them get there.
- Wealth Creation - Somehow most companies are shy about wanting to make money. It’s looked at as this thing which everyone does but no one really talks about.
We’re not ashamed of doing it for the money. Wealth unlocks choice. If life is an amusement park, we think there is value to getting an unlimited rides pass. It's purposeful for us to try to create wealth that allows people to achieve their life's dreams - whether that's owning a house or booking a dream vacation for their parents. We do this by ensuring everyone in the team gets equity and there are generous cash & equity bumps on a frequent basis to reward performance and alignment in values.
- Winning Together - We’re not here for a participation certificate. We’re playing to win. The keyword here is ‘together’. Winning ‘together’ is about recognising it’s a team sport. We don't care about man of the match awards, either we win the trophy or we don’t. There is a certain camaraderie that comes with winning together that’s hard to explain, but it’s deeply fulfilling and energising. The question we ask ourselves is - can we play the game like it’s never been played before?
Our Values
Our values are about how we do what we do. Values define the right thing to do. We hire, reward and sometimes have to let go based on our values. ****We have 5 core values:-
- Go Above And Beyond - We value people who care about doing a good job. Going above and beyond is about doing more than the bare minimum that gets the job done and raising the bar each time we have the opportunity to do so
- Making Things Happen - Each company has an operating rhythm and this is that for us. Making things happen is the opposite of being passive. It’s about high agency, about always believing there is a way to get what we want and either finding the way or making the way
- Say It Like It Is - We are candid and direct when it comes to sharing feedback, transparent with our numbers and intellectually honest about the realities of any business situation