Beliefs

We believe that artificial intelligence (AI) is a step function improvement for all software products, especially productivity software. For work, AI is already the largest innovation since cloud-based infrastructure made real-time collaboration possible, but it will go on to become the largest innovation of our lifetime. AI will fundamentally change the way humans work: automatically drafted email replies, intelligently triaged customer support tickets, fully automated outbound sales processes, tasks that are automatically tagged, prioritized, and assigned. AI will revolutionize entire categories of stagnant workplace software.

We believe that businesses are shifting towards metric-driven employee management. With a growing percentage of human work being completed online (on a computer), the process of “coming to work” or “face time” has gone the way of the dinosaur. This has led to the advent of remote and hybrid work environments, which are here to stay. Businesses now need a new system for measuring employee output and execution. For this to occur, there must be a way to objectively measure an employee’s output.

We believe that context switching kills productivity. Put differently, a single, integrated software product leads to increased output. Software bloat is a real problem which costs hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per employee per month. Worse, the complexity of learning, integrating, and navigating between multiple platforms wastes hours of employees’ valuable time each day. This is inefficient. A vertically integrated solution can solve these issues by natively tackling every problem in a work flow. Further, the data framework that the software product collects can then be used to create entirely new products and features which are not otherwise possible. The resulting product will eventually achieve a 10x

We believe software products used at work should be beautiful and delightful to use. They should be inspired by art, nature, and video games. They should be inspiring, human, and fun. People should love these products, not tolerate them. These software products should be inherently intuitive, not complex and confusing. They should be easy to learn, for everyone, while providing incredible depth for those who demand it. They should feel intentionally designed for each user, so people can highlight what they want to see, and hide what they don’t. Software should “just work.”

We believe that to succeed, new software products need to be better, faster, and cheaper than incumbent solutions.

We believe innovation in software is more subtle than people assume. Revolutionary software businesses and products rarely start out in entirely new categories. The risk is enormous that people don’t want a new category of product. Instead, it’s better to start in an established category with a focus on challenging every prior assumption and reinventing the entire category of software products. “Build and wander,” and there will be enormous opportunity for innovation.

Keep Costs Low

Keep Product Velocity High

Efficiency Compounds Yielding Additional Efficiency

Simplicity > Complexity

Speed is the Competitive Advantage

Feedback is a Previous Gift

Move Fast(er) and Break (More) things

Launch Earlier, and More Often (Small Splashes > Big Splash)

Stealth <> Wealth (Build in Public)

Consistency is Key (Never Give Up)

Results will Follow

Our culture is built on ownership and freedom which breeds innovation. We are focused on bringing on exceptional employees and creating a meritocratic culture. We trust our employees, so we provide them with true freedom to do what is best for Tatem. Since we trust our team, we provide them with the maximum amount of autonomy, responsibility, and ownership. This increases efficiency, attracts increasing levels of talent, and ensures that the business is innovating at every level of the organization. We have designed our culture on the belief that people can only innovate when they have the freedom to do so. We want ideas to come from anyone and at the company, and for the people that have brilliant ideas to be able to pursue them.

We’re a high performance culture focused on attracting, retaining, developing, and promoting exceptional talent. Top performers want to be surrounded by other top performers, which leads to a cycle of increasing talent density. One weak link causes the entire organization to make a sacrifice. Mean, lazy, or kind-but-average employees are not good fits at Tatem. We immediately let employees go once we realize that they’re not a fit within the company. This ensures that the talent pool remains incredibly high. We also target employees who will contribute their opinion (and even counter opinions, kindly), which allows us to make the best possible decisions.

We’ve all heard “good is the enemy of great,” but at Tatem, great is the enemy of good. Speed is at the center of everything we do. Moving fast and shipping as soon as it’s “good enough” is how we operate. This allows us to improve our product every single day. We aim to make at least one significant release to our core production build, each week. Moving fast and breaking things is not a novel cultural value, which means we have to move faster. The biggest advantage that startups have vs. large incumbents is the ability to move more quickly as there are less layers of bureaucracy to wade through. At Tatem, we have 0 layers. Our entire business and culture are structured to enable us to move as fast as possible. All of our values work together towards the single goal of enabling us to move (and learn) incredibly fast.

We started as a bootstrapped business, by choice. Early on at Tatem, we only had the capital to do one thing, so it had to be the most important thing. We didn’t have the resources to become distracted. We want to maintain that focus as we grow, so our frugality permeates every decision we make, whether it’s deciding to grow the team before we really need to, spending large amounts on flashy marketing campaigns, or purchasing exorbitant (or unnecessary) equipment for our team... Our frugality ensures that we remain scrappy, lean, and efficient, which will yield powerful results.

Our customers should be the number one brand ambassadors for Tatem. There is nothing we won’t do to ensure our customers have a magical experience. Serving our customers is the foundation of our business, and we will go out of our way to accomplish that mission. A negative customer experience is the most costly error we could make. It means we failed.

Given the large amount of freedom and ownership we provide our employees, immense context and transparency from leadership are required to ensure strong alignment throughout the organization. Without transparency, there wouldn’t be enough context to make good decisions, nor would employees trust that leadership believes in them.

It goes without saying, but at Tatem we care deeply about employee productivity. We only pursue initiatives that lead to measurable productivity gains. We want employees to do the best work of their entire career at Tatem. Years down the road, we want our team to look back with pride at what they accomplished here. It’s not easy, but it is worth it. We don’t want employees working to “punch the clock,” we want them working to make Tatem 1% better every day.