At the Trailhead: HappyFunCorp’s First Company Values

Here on the HappyFunCorp Codex, we’re used to talking about the work we’ve done, interesting solutions, or developments in code and tooling.

We’re presenting something a little different today: Our first set of company values.

As the Black Lives Matter movement came front and center in the summer of 2020, a group of HFCers got together to channel our frustration, sadness, and anger into change: we wanted more than empty words, and more than a rebranding. It was made up of people from disparate corners of our company: both senior and newer team members, whose drive to do something was brought on by every different kind of life experience.

We wanted to do some good — but in a lasting way. And we were very aware that we had to think hard about what good meant to us. We were working together across very different experiences, perspectives, and sometimes assumptions about each other, but we all knew there was more HappyFunCorp could do to be the kind of equitable workplace we wanted. What differences could we make in a distributed, remote-first, highly autonomous company?

Over the course of 2021, we spent time brainstorming, listening to our teams and colleagues, and building the skills to think better about race, equity, intersectionality, and actions that stick.

It became plain that none of it was possible without a set of values to navigate by. Values work can be sometimes fairly criticized as marketing. We realized it could be our guiding star: Why we start and stay at HappyFunCorp, what we carry into every room. If we could firmly and deliberately decide who we already were — and who we wanted to be — we would know better how to steer toward it.

Through a tumultuous year of keeping each other going across distances — through international crises, first and second COVID shots, personal grief and loss, joys, stresses, and intense industry uncertainty — we thought about how we want to move in a complex world. Sometimes it was only for ten minutes in a packed week. The project dropped, or took a back seat to family emergencies, tight client timelines, and sheer fatigue. We kept picking it back up.

In the end, we’ve found a way to express five ideals we believe in: a handful of the vertebrae that are HFC’s living spine. Like a physical spine, these pieces of collective integrity will support and change how we move our whole body. They will keep our actions and goals aligned with the world we want to see, in our individual choices and together. They will hold us together when this work is at risk of flying apart.

HappyFunCorp is, at its heart, made of smart, disparate, unique, and growing people. Here’s who we want to be together:

Creative Optimism

For us, building better products is dreaming bigger futures. We create not just products but capacity, empowering our clients with novel and thoughtful solutions. In an industry founded on dynamic change we know curiosity is our utility belt, and are constantly considering technology’s potential, changing real-world contexts, and what out-of-the-box thinking means today — or tomorrow.

Dignity

We value each other not just as co-workers or clients but people, whose varied interests, diverse lives, and myriad relationships make us unique. The ways we work together support all the lives HFCers live outside the office: we take proactive work/life balance measures, respect each other’s time, and maintain a culture of consideration first.

Equity

HappyFunCorp is diverse in multiple dimensions : gender identity, sexuality, neurotype, ability, religion, race, and region. Since our inception, we’ve actively recruited colleagues with different backgrounds, lives, and experiences worldwide for both entry and leadership roles. We understand equity needs a long-term, persistent approach and treat it as a constantly-renewing process, but engage the real needs of team members today.

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Half the joy of learning what’s past the next hill is how you get there. We help countless companies launch, grow, or realize their potential every year, and stay active partners as they develop. Technical agility, multidisciplinary experience, and a work ethic that cares about results help us cross-apply what we’ve learned to meet new challenges with more creative solutions.

Trust

Trust is HappyFunCorp’s deepest belief: that the best way to build businesses efficiently and with excellence is to trust each other’s expertise — and be worthy of each other’s trust. We take ownership of our work and create generous room to float that next idea. Our greatest joy is working collaboratively with such a symphony of talent — and helping each other develop into the best musicians we can be. Leopold!

A set of company values can feel like a small result. While each and every word was pored and turned over, there aren’t very many in a row.

We want to assure any partners and friends looking at starting their own values work that the worth in these few words has been the process of making them. It’s been eye-opening, sometimes frustrating, and incredibly worthwhile: an affirmation of who we are together as well as who we want to be. It’s been a necessary reality check on what we’ll have to do to make those goals concrete, and all the ways we think about process, change, failure, hope, and the sheer art of getting stuff done.

In 2022, we’re building up our own internal practice on how these values will show in our actions. We’re talking about the ways we work now, and rolling up sleeves to adjust them for openness, generosity, equity, and sustainable action.

We’re certain we’ll meet some interesting failures along the way. We absolutely plan to fail better, and keep picking it back up.

See you on the trail,

Signed,

Your HappyFunPeople