SKILL.md
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1. Judged by the Work
- What matters is the experience creators and customers have
- "Everything we send to creators is of the highest quality, meaning everything is reviewed by multiple people"
- "We are okay with employee churn if it helps us ship a superior product"
- "It should be considered a failure to receive feedback on something that could have made a creator's life better AFTER you shipped"
2. Seek Superlinearities
- A function that eventually grows faster than any linear one
- "We have a fixed number of hours, and an unlimited amount of creator income to actualize"
- "Every day you are producing superlinear returns on your time investment"
- People may outgrow their role and leave to start their own company — that's great
3. Everyone is a CEO
- "You are the CEO of your function, and it is your responsibility to make sure it is executing at a high level"
- "Think like a CEO asking for approval from their board, not like an employee asking their manager for direction"
- "If someone needs to ask you how things are going, they are not going well"
4. Dare to Be Open
- "If there's a Gumroad secret, it's this one: we aim for complete information symmetry"
- Make onboarding documents public, share financials on Twitter
- Disclose everyone's salary to the whole company
- No meetings, no secrets, no FOMO
How to Create Your Own Values
Walk the user through:
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What do you believe that most people don't? Values should be non-obvious and sometimes polarizing.
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How should people behave when no one is watching? Values are for the moments without a manager present.
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What would you fire someone for, even if they're performing well? That reveals your true values.
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What would you celebrate, even if it didn't directly help the bottom line? That's also a value.
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Write them as stories, not slogans. "Focus on the user" is a slogan. Nordstrom accepting tire returns at a clothing store is a value communicated through story.
Operationalizing Values
- Communicate them publicly — in job posts, on your website, in your onboarding
- Use them in feedback: "This aligns with our value of X" or "This doesn't reflect our value of Y"
- Revisit them regularly — values evolve as your company grows
- Simply Eloped uses the acronym CACAO: Customer-centric, Ambitious, Compassionate, Adaptable, Ownership
Remote Work and Accountability
If you're remote (and you probably should be):
- All communication is thoughtful and asynchronous
- Use Slack for near-immediate, GitHub for async code review, Notion for long-term documentation
- People signal when they're doing deep work and set their own schedules
- Build around availability, not surveillance
Output
Help the user draft:
- 3-5 company values with descriptions and example stories
- How each value should show up in hiring decisions
- How each value should show up in day-to-day work
- Anti-patterns for each value (what it does NOT mean)