Stellate Handbook

Our Culture and Values

Culture is the invisible glue that binds us. It is what will hold us together in challenging times and it is what will embrace us during exhilarating times. Culture is what ultimately facilitates and accelerates expansive growth which is why we are very intentional about our culture.
Our culture is first and foremost about our people and how we connect and support each other. It is also about processes, implicit and explicit. We work together to define, refine, and live our culture everyday. It is strengthened by consistency and intentionality--reinforced by what we each say/don’t say and what we each do/don’t do. It is weakened by apathy and malintent, and loses clarity when it’s not lived consistently.
Our culture is intentional and yet imperfect, and that too, is intentional, because we aren’t seeking perfection or a state of being done. Our culture work is never “done” and we seek to continually learn and evolve.
That is why we are elated to share our culture with you and even more excited to see how you contribute to our ever evolving culture! We welcome your feedback and your lived-in perspectives and ask for your participation in reinforcing and improving our culture each day.

Values

We are values-driven at Stellate. Shared values are the foundation of successful collaboration.
 
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Intentionality

Intentionality is: purposefully thinking and taking action toward a specific outcome.
At Stellate, intentionality permeates everything we do. Our actions demonstrate our choices in the “how” and “why” of the way we show up to the broader ecosystem and to each other. Our intentional actions build the foundation of trust, vulnerability, and accountability, which enables us to do the best work of our lives.
Being intentional about our actions also means not taking action when it’s not the right place and time to do so. We are committed to driving focus by doing less because even seemingly small decisions can have deep ripple effects across Stellate.

Win as one team

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
We can’t win alone, we have to win together. Combining our unique experiences and skillsets allows us to achieve more together than we ever thought was possible. By fostering an environment of trust, collaboration, and growth we can maximize our collective potential and do the best work of our lives. Let's work together to win as one team!

In Action:

Assume good intent.
We assume the best when consuming information. Whether it’s listening in a conversation, reading a message, or reviewing a proposal, we assume our team has the best intentions in mind and we come back to them with care and curiosity.
Default to open.
We actively create opportunities for improvement by being open with information, process, and learnings. By sharing in the open, we are enabling each other to make decisions and thus all of us move faster.
Value individuality.
We acknowledge English is mostly our second language, and the fact that we come from different cultures and life experiences, we want to embrace the things that makes us different and collaborate in building a better company and making the best possible products. The whole is more than the sum of its parts!
Share ownership of our purpose.
We are all stakeholders of accomplishing our mission, we will hold each other accountable, and always challenge each other and our assumptions to keep us focused on our purpose.
Do whatever it takes.
We proactively raise our hands, act on things, and put our efforts into improving the ecosystem we operate in. While we work towards common goals, we embrace that we have diverse priorities and certain aspects of our work that are dear to us. This means that we see opportunities arise at different points and in different areas. These combined efforts make sure we are moving forward as a company.
Create a space for all of us to belong.
Having a sense of belonging enables us to do our best work, trust our peers, and come with an open mind. This means we collaborate in creating a space where we can make mistakes, learn, and grow.
We are fast, together.
We don’t go undercover and play the hero, instead we share context, and move together to accomplish our goals. We will prioritize documentation and knowledge sharing over racing to the finish line alone. We support each other, push each other, and make sure we are all moving forward even if that means slowing down to check our pulse.
Embrace vulnerability.
We acknowledge we are not robots performing tasks, we are humans with real feelings. We listen to each other, we don’t do feigning surprises, and show up with empathy and openness to any interaction. This also means we support each other when having a bad day or trough any situation we might be going trough life, and we give each other space when needed.
We make time for fun.
We cannot collaborate effectively without trust, and having fun together is a great way to build trust. We make space and time for bonding as a team and getting to know each other better.
We include each other.
We pay attention to what others say, and intentionally hold space in all conversations to make sure everybody is included.

Make an impact

The story of a startup has two ends: You change the world, or you die. In order to change the world, we need to build quality products that solve real problems in a way that is better, greater, quicker than everything that came before. We need to change peoples lives for the better. We enable everyone who is along for the journey to grow, learn and elevate those around them. Only by making this kind of impact can we succeed.

In Action:

Think big and start small.
In order to change the world we have to set out to solve problems where we can have a meaningful impact. However, it can be daunting and overwhelming to approach such a huge challenge. We are intentional about creating a strategy that enables us to get started small, taking one step at a time.
We solve real-world problems.
We can build innovative solutions all day long, however, changing the world is only possible if these solutions solve actual problems. We always validate that the work we’re doing and the problems we’re picking up are connected to real humans in the real world.
Give our users superpowers.
Having an impact is not only about giving people what they want, it’s about understanding what is blocking them or slowing them down. With this deep level of understanding we can come up with solutions that solve our users problems in the best way possible, potentially much better than the initial solution they longed for.
We are drivers, not passengers.
We trust and empower each other to make decisions that steer our company towards success. This enables everyone to drive efforts, and with everyone driving, we are faster in finding opportunities, innovating, and executing on our vision.
Create focus by also saying no to good ideas.
We have many exciting and interesting problems that we could tackle, but only so many resources we can work with at any given time. We have to be mindful of which problems we choose to solve and create focus on the ones with the highest impact. We believe in delivering fewer great solutions over delivering many mediocre ones.
Take calculated risks.
Building products that make an impact requires experimentation. Experimentation requires taking risks and the bigger the risk, the greater the potential impact. We intentionally choose the right risks through a mix of exploration, validation, learning, and drawing from previous experiences.
Pursue velocity.
As a startup, time is limited. We don’t want to just be fast, we want to be intentional of the direction we choose and move in that direction with speed. This conscious pursuit of velocity over speed is maximizing our chances of making an impact and succeeding as a company.
Balance quality and scope with velocity.
Implementing our vision is an enormous task that requires many smaller and larger steps along the way. Pursuing perfection in quality and scope will slow us down too much, while the opposite will not be satisfying for us and our customers. A balance of scope and quality with velocity will give us an efficiency to deliver our goals effectively.
Amplify others—be it users, colleagues or the wider community.
Having impact is not only building the right products, but also the effect we have on every human along the way. We take time to learn, teach and grow together as well as building the right products to help people in order to enable everyone to have an even greater impact on those around them.
Give back to the community.
We wouldn’t be here without the work the community has been doing. The enthusiasm, learning materials, forums and open source projects provide us with the basis of our success and we want to show our gratitude by fostering and improving the community in any way we can.
Strive for excellence.
We bring together exceptionally skilled people and deliver high quality work. We understand excellence not only to encompass quality work, but also the human. We’re excellent teammates by showing up for each other and approaching everyone with empathy. We’re excellent learners by actively listening, asking questions and sharing knowledge in the open.

Iterate quickly

A startup is inevitably a race. It’s a race against running out of funds and a race against the competition. The only way to win this race is to run fast in the right direction, otherwise known as velocity.
We win if we repeatedly discover ways to solve problems engineering organizations face, aligned with our company vision and values, at speed greater than our competition and before the funds run out. The most effective way to do this is to test our assumptions with the market and iterate upon our learnings quickly.

In Action:

Scope down and ship.
Smaller components increase confidence because they have less risk than bigger components and are easier to move forward. Constantly identify the riskiest assumption of a project, an initiative or an idea, and then ask “how can we can scope down the work required to (in)validate that risk?”
Safe to try? Just do it.
Most things we do every day are reversible decisions (”type 2” decisions). Ask yourself if the decision you’re making is reversible, and if so, just do it. Then, learn from the outcome, share your learnings, and iterate based on the learnings.
Make a decision.
For reversible decisions, making the decision is more important than making the “best” decision. Instead of slowing down to analyze what the best decision might be, make an informed decision with the information at hand, learn from the outcome, and iterate based on the learnings.
Seek clarity.
Clarity and decisions drive focus. We strive for clarity in our communication and our actions, as very few things slow down an organization like ambiguity. If you’re unclear about something, seek clarity and bring it up!
Motion does not equal action; take action.
Motion (planning, strategizing, learning, communicating) might feel like progress, but if we don’t take action, we’ll never get actual results. Take action!
Continuously improve.
Action → Observe → Retro → Learn → 🔁 Action → Observe → Retro → Learn → 🔁 Action →…
Continuously improving requires a cycle of learning and taking action. None of the elements of the cycle exists in isolation. Every step is required for the cycle to be completed.
The only failure is a failure to learn.
An activity, task, or project which did not fulfill its goal is only a failure if we break our cycle of continuous improvement, i.e. if we were not able to extract actionable learnings with which to start the next cycle.
Seek feedback.
Every piece of feedback is an opportunity for growth. Nobody has ever done before what we are doing, so being great at what we do requires a lot of growth. Seek the feedback and grow!
Be courageous.
We know that learning requires experimentation; experimentation involves risk; and taking risks require courage. Be courageous! Develop the relationships, learn the skills, reach out for the help, take on new responsibilities, and dream big!
Learn and share learnings in the open.
Learning in the open and sharing in the open amplifies others. It increases the potential to positively impact others by providing opportunities for them to indirectly gain experience and knowledge.
 

Even/over statements

We utilize even over statements to show how our values are lived everyday. Here is an excerpt from The Ready, whose founder explains the power of “even over” statements:
“Prior to the 1940's, the word priorities (plural) was rarely used. Because the word priority means that which comes before anything else. It's one thing! But these days, it's not uncommon for leaders and boards to demand multiple, often contradictory outcomes at the same time. We want faster output AND higher quality. We want to grow market share in our core category AND open three new categories. We want to hit the impossible target AND have work life balance. But as the saying goes, if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. What we need is a way to make tradeoffs explicit and strategic. And that's exactly what ["even over" statement does]. [It asks] us to put one good thing “even over” another good thing.”
 
  • Progress even over perfection.
  • Consent even over consensus.
  • Kind even over nice.
  • Observing even over speaking.
  • Focus even over good ideas.
  • Fun even over efficiency.
  • Moving fast together even over moving faster yourself.
  • Diverse perspectives even over our own expertise.
  • Courage even over comfort.
  • Curiosity even over process.
  • Making a decision even over careful deliberation.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB)

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Here’s our adapted version of the classic “party metaphor” of DEIB: Diversity is being invited to the party. Equity is everyone having access to everything that the party has to offer. Inclusion is being asked to dance. Belonging is being able to dance your own dance, bring your own dish to add to the buffet, as well as freely contribute to the playlist.
We integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging into our everyday--from day one--and in every part of our growth. DEIB isn’t just a checkbox, a percentage, or a seasonal initiative; it’s about the way we create space for every individual to show up and do the best work of their lives. No one can be their best when microaggression, covering, and discrimination are present. It is not to say that these elements are not present at Stellate, because as we build an all-distributed team across the globe, it is inevitable that we unintentionally impact, upset, or hurt each other. We are people and we will make mistakes. However, our culture is defined in how we acknowledge, learn, repair, improve, and reconnect.
It is not in zero-tolerance that we build our culture but rather in shared experiences of learning and growing together. Our focus on DEIB lies in humanity, connection, grace, learnings, and growth mindset. We strive to build a culture that allows for people to speak up with a strong but kind voice when transgressed upon. We strive to build a culture where we receive feedback with grace and humility. We strive to build a culture focused on learnings versus blame, through communication, education, alliance, and support.

All-Distributed Team

We’re a 100%, all-distributed company. We are not bound by geography, arbitrary demarcation of nations, language, or social norms. We are building a company with the best talent, equally unbounded. We believe that this is the future of work.
An all-distributed company means that we’re in great company with some of the best run top organizations in the world, like HashiCorp, GitLab, Zapier, and more. We will take our learnings from those who came before us. And just like these companies, we will also do things differently and blaze our own trail.

High-Performing Supportive Team

All-distributed workforce provides us with greater opportunities to build high-performing and supportive teams, with intentionality, consistency, and accountability.
  • We have a joint vision of our goals
  • We put the team above self
  • We show up
    • We show up for ourselves, our work, our peers, our customers, our community, and our investors.
  • We take calculated but bold risks
  • We iterate quickly and learn even faster
  • The only failure is a situation where we failed to learn
  • We enable and empower each other through transparency, accountability, and unwavering collaboration
  • We are compassionate with ourselves and each other

Performance Review

Performance review is a part of our DEIB initiative. It levels the playing field for every person, ensuring equal opportunities for feedback and promotion. We will implement a 6 month performance review process at a future date.

Promotions

We promote once the individual is already performing at the new level, not once they show promise. Here’s why:
  • “Showing promise” is subjective. Actually doing the work is objective.
  • Promoting people before they show proven ability increases the odds that they will be impacted by imposter syndrome.
  • Growing into the role creates opportunities to surface gaps and therefore training opportunities.
 

Whistleblower Policy

Our Whistleblower Policy encourages employees to confidentially report any perceived illegal, unethical, or policy-breaching activities within the organization, fostering a safe and ethical work environment.
Reports can be made anonymously through two different Google forms:
  1. The first sends reports directly to our Founders and Ops team
  1. The second is specifically for concerns about the Founders or Ops team and is accessed solely by Andreas Heiberg, our Engineering Manager.
These reports can cover a range of concerns, such as financial irregularities, discrimination, misuse of resources, and safety issues. We guarantee thorough investigation of all reports, utmost protection of whistleblower's anonymity, and no retaliation against good-faith reporting.
This process is vital in upholding our values and maintaining a culture of transparency and integrity.

How Do We Work?

Here’s how we work across the company:

  1. Trust is the bedrock upon which everything else is built.
    1. Accountability
    2. Kindness
    3. Putting the team first
  1. We are asynchronous by design.
    1. We prioritize asynchronous communication and decision making.
    2. Real-time communication (over video or face-to-face communication) is a privilege of those who are in work mode at a coincidental time. With a global-first team, across many timezones, this isn’t a privilege that everyone has the opportunity to participate in.
    3. Asynchronous, written communication is an inclusion initiative.
      1. Allows everyone who needs to participate in the discussion have an opportunity to share, regardless of the timezone of their residence.
      2. Provides opportunity for the writer to collect their thoughts and employ principled reasoning in what they are sharing.
        1. Principled Reasoning:
          1. Clarify: Determine precisely what must be decided
          2. Evaluate: Distinguish solid facts from beliefs desires, theories, suppositions, unsupported, conclusions, and opinions that might generate rationalizations.
          3. Decide: after evaluating the information available, make a judgment about what is or is not true, an about what consequences are most likely to occur.
          4. Implement: once a decision is made about what to do develop a plan of how to implement the decision in a way that maximizes the benefits and minimizes the costs and risks.
          5. Monitor and Modify: monitor the effects of decisions and be prepared and willing to revise a plan, or take a different course of action based on new information.
      3. Provides opportunity for thoughtful reception and reduces knee-jerk reaction to messages when reading then responding in writing, thus reducing communication tension.
      4. Reduces dominance of those with boisterous personalities and voices.
        1. Conversations can be dominated by those who are naturally louder or by the highest ranking/paid individuals. Their opinions can often have greater weight than the opinion of others, even when it might not be the best or most sound. In written communication, this is naturally tempered as it requires thoughtful positioning of any discussion topics and provides everyone time to carefully consider and assess each written position.
  1. We prioritize explicit communications and intentional connections
  1. Memorialize decisions
    1. We capture meeting notes and decisions made in such meetings.
  1. What we say matters
    1. Distributed work/team over remote team/work
      1. Remote denotes distance, perhaps even obstacle.
      2. Distributed denotes sharing, parsing out of a larger task or thing.
    2. Proven practices over best practices
      1. Proven denotes that it has empirical data that it works.
      2. “Best” denotes that there’s only one best way.
    3. Recognition over praise.
      1. Recognition shows acknowledgement of the effort and outcome
      2. Praise is a favorable judgement
  1. Change agility is a core competence
    1. Every startup is unique but they all have one thing in common--it’s an ever changing environment. As a startup grows & matures, it is inevitable that it is different tomorrow than it is today.
    2. Embrace uncertainty with grace.
    3. We strive to level up the company with every new hire. This means that at some point, the company’s growth may have outpaced our individual ability to grow into a role. When this is the case, you will:
      1. Be asked to take a different role,
        1. In the same department. Your new role may be a “level down” from the current role in title but commiserate with your level of work. This is because our growth has outpaced the experience of all those in the company, and therefore has surfaced the need to bring in new talent that can help us grow to the next level.
          1. If this were to happen, you will keep your current compensation package, including your equity.
          2. You will get a different title. However, this does not impact your ability to grow and advance in your career with Stellate
          3. Because you’ll be at a higher comp package than others with your title, there may be a longer period of time when you may feel that your career path is stagnant. However, this is not the case. As long as you continue progressing, your compensation and progress will cross paths again.
        2. In a new department. If you are so qualified and choose to do so, you can move into a new department and continue your career path.
      2. Participate in the hiring process of the incoming person (to take on the role at the new scale)
      3. Be provided an opportunity to learn from the incoming person
      4. Your comp will never be reduced due to change in role at the request of the company. (If you choose to make a lateral move of your own accord, your comp may be adjusted to be commensurate with the role)
    4. Growth rate will outpace the rate of onboarding in a hyper-growth environment.
      1. Onboarding will be a work in progress and may remain that way for a long time so long as we are hyper-scaling. This is okay. We will learn and iterate as quickly as we can, but we may never catch up. We can accept that.
      2. We have to accept that the company may outgrow any and all processes that have been in place.
  1. Feedback is necessary for growth
    1. Feedback at Stellate is not transactional
      1. There is great responsibility to the person giving feedback to provide as much context as possible.
      2. There is great responsibility in the receiver of the feedback to receive it without defensiveness, listening for intent, and trust that the giver has the best intentions in mind.
    2. As a general guidance:
      1. Accolades are given in public,
      2. Constructive feedback is given in private, and face-to-face (NOT over slack!)
  1. We default to open.
    1. Information is power. When we withhold information, we are ultimately withholding ideation, possibilities, and progress. We empower everyone by distributing information. We strive to make information complete and available (while taking privacy into consideration). We create explicit communication over implicit communication.
    2. We have a culture of communicating in written, recorded audio, and video form. We work in different time zones and across continents. We can’t rely on the classic watercooler happenchance to relay important information, nor can we assume we’ll deliver it in face-to-face meetings.
    3. Data, information, decisions, and communications do not live in silos.
  1. Slack Protocol
    1. Handle/name convention
      1. Everyone uses their real name for their handle
      2. First_name [current city/country of where one is working]
      3. First and last name is provided in the profile
    2. Channel naming convention
      1. #Stellate-x- : our company + people from another company
        1. There are people outside of our company in here, please do not share sensitive information and be mindful of your level of professionalism
      2. #fun- : interest groups that are not work-related
    3. Default to open.
      1. Default to keeping posts and discussions as public as possible.
    4. @channel is for BIG announcements
      1. Use rarely
      2. Emergencies
      3. All-hands-on-deck situations
      4. Everyone needs to know an important announcement
    5. @here is to ping everyone who is currently online in a specific channel.
      1. Use sparingly
    6. #daily-status
      1. Channel used to update your work attendance.
      2. Asynchronous way to let people know when you are in work mode, when you’ve stepped away, and when you’re done working for the day.
        1. I.e “I’m working my normal hours today!”; “grabbing food, be back in 45mins”; “Walking the dog - back in 15mins”. “Done for the day, good night!”
      3. As we grow and have cross-functional teams, communication in this channel will be critical for collaboration, especially for real-time work.
    7. #new-hire-pre-access
      1. This is the single channel that every new hire will be invited into after they have signed the employment contract.
      2. First impressions matter! Everyone, please be active in welcoming people and answering questions in this channel.
    8. #random
      1. Non-sequitur channel of randomness and delight.
  1. Email
    1. Email is for formal communications, contracts, and communication with those outside of Stellate who are not on our shared slack spaces.

Here's how we work in Engineering & Product

  • Engineering
    • We're running on bi-weekly sprints and use Linear for our task tracking.
    • We follow the Linear method: https://linear.app/method Please give it a read.
    • Simple principles: When you don't know, if a process exists, for example for database migrations, what's the best way to deal with that situation? Ask. If you then have a proposal for a new / better process, please create that proposal as a linear issue and ask your colleagues for feedback in Linear. Linear is a much better way to discuss, as you have a structured comment approach that is persisted for the afterworld.
    • If you can't figure things out immediately, don't hesitate to ask, especially in your first weeks and months at Stellate, it's more than normal to ask questions!

Here's how we work with Vendor Contractors

  • Scope of work

Here's how we work in Finance

Payroll
  • For now, everyone in the company, contractors and employees alike, are paid via Remote, our Employer of Record (EOR) platform. Employees in the USA are paid via Rippling.
  • We process payroll on accounting norms for each region.
  • The UK and the EU personnel are paid in arrears on a monthly cycle via Remote, at the end of the month for the preceding month of work.
  • US-based personnel are paid in arrears, on a bi-monthly cycle on the 1st and the 15th of the month for the preceding time period.
Accounts Payable - Monies owed by Stellate to another entity
  • All invoices are to be sent to ap@stellate.co (ap@ stands for accounts payable)
  • All invoiced are paid on middle of the month.
    • If either of these dates fall on a weekend or a holiday, it will be paid in the preceding work day.

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