Why this page exists
We sell honesty. Our product tells firms the truth about their teams, so this page has to tell you the truth about ours.
Culture pages are usually pretty posters or a list of nouns. No one was ever hired or fired over them. Not this one. Everything here is either already true or something we want you to hold us to.
Mission
We help organisations keep their best people, and the relationships and knowledge that walk out the door with them.
When the right person leaves the wrong way, a company doesn't just lose a salary. It loses momentum, institutional memory, team chemistry and, in some industries, the clients that person held. We exist to make that loss visible early, and preventable.
Our values
These are the standards we hold each other to, and the ones you're expected to hold us to. They're the filter: they decide who we hire, who we promote and who we let go.
1. Trust is the default
The best people do their best work when trusted, so trust is the starting point of every relationship. You are here for a reason. If we couldn't trust you to do the work, you wouldn't be.
In practice: if it's yours, you make the call.
2. Candor
We say it to your face. Feedback happens in the moment, and it is objective: specific, about the work, never about the person.
Candor can only be normalized here because trust comes first. Nobody can speak plainly where they don't feel safe, so psychological safety isn't the soft opposite of candor; it's what makes candor possible.
In practice: if two people here are discussing your work, you heard it first.
3. Ownership
Nobody here waits to be told. See a problem and it's yours: you run with it end to end and answer for the outcome, good or bad. Ask forgiveness, not permission.
You will get honest feedback if you ask for it, and sometimes if you don't. But it's your call whether you take it.
In practice: you will get responsibility slightly before you feel ready. That's on purpose.
4. No ceiling
Our goals sound unreasonable when said out loud. We operate with almost naive optimism: we refuse to size our ambitions to our headcount, and "we don't know how" is a starting point, never an answer.
We aim stupidly high and simplify. We ask: what would this look like if it were easy?
In practice: we never reject a goal for being too ambitious, or for taking too long. Time will pass anyway.
5. Cognitive flexibility
A non-negotiable trait in our team. We drop ideas, change direction, or even scrap weeks of work when the data or a better argument kills them. Even when the idea was ours. Especially when it was ours.
Michael Seibel says to hold on tightly to the problem and the customer, and loosely to the solution. That's us. Paired with our drive, it means we are stubborn about the destination and flexible on every route to it.
In practice: being wrong costs nothing here. Staying wrong costs everything.
6. Client first
Our software is built to be kept. Client first means our clients get value from what we build — that's the priority, and everything else follows. Customer loyalty is the metric we hold ourselves to.
We obsess over every single touchpoint and make it the best it can be. There is no version of this company that wins with an unhappy client and a beautiful product. Our clients are our biggest asset, and we intend for them to be our best marketing.
In practice: we'd rather keep a client than win a new one.
7. Work is play
You can't compete with someone who's having fun. We found people who really enjoy this: the work, the building, the problems, even the mess in between. The work is the fun part, not the price of it.
In practice: nobody here is counting down to Friday.
How we work
- Output. We don't track time and we don't perform busyness. We agree on the outcome; how, when and where you deliver it is your call.
- Data driven. Data drives most decisions here, not all of them. We work with people, and some calls are judgment.
- Decide at 70%. Waiting for complete information is also a decision, usually the wrong one. When uncertain, bring a proposed approach, then ask.
- Leverage. The question is "how do we get 10x the result with less?" Big goals on small teams force better methods, not longer hours.
- One owner, start to finish. Every task has a name on it, and that person carries it through: the decisions, the outcome, the mistakes.
Talent
The average person here isn't average anywhere else. Everyone on this team would have been the best hire at their last company. Here's how we keep it that way:
- We hire when we find the person, not when we open the vacancy. Exceptional people are rare, and we're not missing any chances.
- We hire for intelligence, energy and integrity. As Buffett warns, without the third, the first two will kill you.
- Radical meritocracy. Age is not a factor in roles or pay. Years of experience and competence are not the same thing, and we've seen the difference too many times to pretend otherwise.
- We look for people who learn whatever the problem requires.
- If it's not a hell yes, it's a no.
The long game
We ask clients to keep their best people for decades. It would be ridiculous to run our own company any other way.
So we play long-term games with long-term people, in Naval's words. We hire people we want to build with for years, and we take on the responsibility of making staying worth it. Trust, skills and relationships all compound; we optimise for the compounding, not for the quarter.
Our own retention is the first proof of our product.
Team > Client > Product
In that order.
The client comes first in everything we build and everything we deliver. But if it ever comes down to it, we would rather lose a client than lose a person to a conflict we could have prevented. Every single member of AuthenticTeamz is carefully picked and here for a reason. The relationships inside this team are the one thing we won't trade.
Work with us, or with us
If keeping your best people matters more than replacing them, we should talk. Book a demo
If this page read like a description of you, don't wait for a vacancy. Tell us what you'd do here. There might not be an open role; that has never stopped us. Say hello
We stole with pride
Good artists copy, great artists steal. These are the people and documents we stole from:
- Augusta Labs and their culture doc, for proving a Portuguese company can write one worth reading
- Luca Ferrari and Bending Spoons, on radical meritocracy and building a talent-dense company
- Naval Ravikant, on long-term games with long-term people
- Derek Sivers, on hell yes or no
- Michael Seibel, on holding tightly to the problem and the customer, loosely to the solution
- Warren Buffett, on intelligence, energy and integrity
If this doc inspires yours someday, steal well and credit loudly.