Starting with why

I wrote something down one day and it became an important part of our new team member onboarding process. It was my way of exposing what we're here to do and what direction I want people to point in.

It's called 'starting with why' because it's in the spirit of tapping in to the deepest level of personal motivation. I chose the name as a nod to Simon Sinek (not everything is original).

Hey [team member], 

Recently I've been lost in a few thoughts. It's a mixture of boundless excitement, frustration and fear for what we are trying to do. I decided to write this all down this morning in order to bring it to some shareable conclusion :)

I'll explain all of these feelings by starting with our why.

The world is chock full of bad. Bad news; tainted politics; conflicts people can barely understand; injustices people can barely live with; inequality and privilege that just won't go away; crime that does the same; business practises that are at best questionable, maybe illegal, certainly immoral.

We are subject to a world spoiled by bad stuff that only a few months on a boat with no phone reception could let us forget about, and it's hard to see through this fog.  And this is western bad - bad for the world's relative upper class. The bad for many others is more real, more close to home and not just viewed through a screen. It's all relative, but it's all bad.

And yet what we are trying to do is create a little corner of joy instead. Right now it's a tiny amount of joy for a small geographical area - something real landing in a person's phone, meaning that little red dot can give them a fleeting moment of joy and comfort that I like to think they couldn't otherwise afford - like when my ex-boss used to give me those pre-filled coffee loyalty cards, an action that said a thousand words.  

What we do seems quite trivial versus all of that bad and also versus many of the amazing things that tech is trying to solve, but nobody really knows the extent of what we are trying to do. It's known to be the case that small things can make a huge difference, and if we can create an environment where these small things can occur daily in their millions, then we can make millions of tiny dents each day that will really add up. 

So what does that environment look like?

Well, breaking it down, huggg is a form of currency and anti-currency at the same time. It isn't a monetary exchange, but instead a token of appreciation, commiseration, love, joy directed at somebody. A huggg is received because it was felt that it was deserved in some way that wasn't just functional or not worthy. A person was having a bad day, did something helpful, achieved something difficult, was missed, loved or cherished. They obtained it because it was deserved, and receiving one is a measure of having moved somebody, so it should make them proud.  

The problem we solve is that spontaneity needs a vehicle. Our solution is to make this action available at everybody's fingertips and create the fulfilment network that is large enough to support it.  

And if we as a business want to do some good, it stands to reason that we should hold our fulfilment network to a high standard too - the bigger we get, the more defined this can be.

And so we carve out a crypto-economy whereby:  

1. Its participants are there through kindness and generosity, and psychologically gain each time they huggg somebody.  
2. Those with the most were the most deserving.
3. Where it is spent has passed some form of good test that we are able to increasingly define.

So imagine, then, that we can redirect $Xbn out of the world economy annually, and redirect it into this economy. Imagine what good this can do. This is no longer trivial, and let me illustrate this with 2 use cases that are very different.

You have a daughter, they're at university in another city - they just got a great exam result and so you'd like to send her and her friends out for cocktails. 2 seconds, one cocktail emoji and you've done it. 

A family in a less privileged position has little. 2 seconds, one flag emoji, and they can eat tonight through some offline product we built.

Those things are what a connected smartphone should be able to do. We absolutely can make this happen, hence the boundless excitement.

Why the frustration?

We can see this, but the route to it is not straight, or straightforward. Forgive the analogy, but it's like a river - we flow towards a sea that can drown out some of the bad, but along the way we will meander according to where we are pushed, and go down the odd tributary that we simply can't avoid.  

I'd say that right now we are in a phase of building, and relative to the end game, our river is barely moving. We're building the team, building product, building momentum, building trust, building the network - it's all happening, but we'd all love if it could happen a lot faster!

Why the fear?

I care so much about making this happen, and have staked so much on it, that I've really no idea how I could ever deal with not achieving it. 

This is truly scary, but also unbelievably motivating - as if the purpose itself were not motivating enough. That's why I can't stop thinking about it, obsessing over it, pushing us to focus. And now that I can sit and see a team of people in front of me which I'm really proud of, and which I know also cares, I know that I can share this without fear of this scaring you away. I know that you'll all rise up and help us to achieve it.

So back to the analogy

The standard of, and depth of, our product and fulfilment network at any one stage dictates how wide, and deep, our river is. How fast it flows depends on making this wider all the time so that the water can move, and this is down to us. I'll never stop running up ahead, doing what I can to increase the flow, straighten the route, dam the tributaries and pull the sea closer. 

Do what you can each day to make this river move. And let's start communicating and being proud of our why, because I'm pretty sure there are lots of people out there that would like to help us to drown out some bad.

P