Virtues are not the same as values. Virtues are behaviors—things we do, not just things we believe. At Almanac, we make a commitment to consistently act in aligned ways that help our team win.

We believe we "ship our virtues"—and as such, these ideas drive every piece of work we do and every decision we make. They play a role in every team meeting and 1:1 conversation, our weekly goal setting and monthly planning processes, our performance reviews, our product roadmap and growth test backlog.

We are what we do. At Almanac, our virtues are who we are.

💪 Ownership | We run towards the fire.

Working at a startup is hard. The push required to make space in the world for a new product can scare some into thinking small.

But doing small things is often just as hard as doing big things. So we choose to do big things. At Almanac, we endeavor to make the struggle worth it through a product that millions can trust to do their best work every day. The nature of the huge market we’re playing in means that the opportunities and challenges in front of us will make anything we’ve already accomplished look like a footnote well into the future.

Greatness is a choice, and what unites our team at Almanac is that we all run towards the fire. We take ownership for claiming the opportunity that lies before us.

🏃‍♂️Velocity | We move like our lives depend on it.

Our customers trust us with their productivity, and therefore their careers. Our goal is to help them focus on great work by eliminating friction around effective learning, creation, and collaboration.

This level of product quality is only achievable through an obsessive focus on our users’ needs, intense discipline around our own output, and most importantly, superhuman levels of iteration and refinement.

Excellence is a function of iteration, and we believe launching—early, often, and well—should be one of our strongest organizational muscles. We won’t always get it right on the first, or even fifth, try. So we maximize the resources we have by moving with urgency towards our goals. We prioritize speed over scope, and quality over speed.

💡 Learning | We act from questions, not answers.

If the world had all the answers to the problem we’re trying to solve, then we wouldn’t have a reason to exist. So we approach the work before us with humility. And we care deeply about getting it right where others haven’t.

Our most important metric is week-over-week learning. We believe seeking the truth starts by partnering with our customers: learning about the realities of their work lives, listening to their aspirations and frustrations, and staying open and curious to what might be possible. Getting outside our own preconceptions and beliefs is the first step towards seeing what was hidden for others.

🎯 Precision | We aim well and focus our one shot.

We have limited resources: time, people, money. So we must make sure that we choose how to spend our resources carefully. And running fast and hard doesn't matter if we're pointed in the wrong direction. We must always take time to look up.

At Almanac, structured thinking is our religion. We consider ideas hypotheses to be validated through tests. We rigorously debate our solutions before acting. We aren't afraid to kill our personal favorites. We choose what logic, intuition, and data illuminate as the best path forward. We look to other industries and spaces for inspiration, knowing we’ll always have more to learn.

While we are not slow, we don't rush. We plan first. We prepare. We check. And then we act.

🤸 Results | We stick the landing.

The productivity space is littered with thoughtful products that couldn’t find a lasting foothold. We compete in the shadow of free, mature tools produced by well-staffed companies.

We plan to win not by competing against others in their categories, but focusing on underserved users who we can wow with the quality of our product. We aspire to craft something so great our users can’t help but tell their friends about it.

Beautiful, fast, reliable products are at the heart of our competitive approach. But we don’t take for granted that just because we build it, users will come. That’s why we’ve invested heavily in an open source repository of free knowledge where our users can share how they use Almanac to work better, and can learn from others across the world.

We believe a platform that makes knowledge universally accessible is more than just good business. It’s a force multiplier of economic opportunity that ensures anyone can compete in the digital economy.

🤝 Relationships | We put company over team, and team over ourselves.

While our product is built of components and code, we’re really shipping the preferences and decisions of our team. When our product sings, it’s because we worked in near-perfect harmony. And bugs or issues in Almanac result, more often than not, from poor communication, incomplete trust, or an unwillingness to ask or provide help.

We believe that hiring deeply good, exceptionally kind people is the most important input into creating an extraordinary product and business. Our people elevate others before themselves. We put the organization first before our own needs. We assume good intentions before criticizing.

A healthy business comes down to the health of our relationships. At Almanac, we push each other on the quality of our thinking and work because it’s what our users deserve. Candor is the best insurance policy against unintended outcomes. We rise and fall as one team—and in the end, we always have each others’ backs.

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