Around 10 years ago I co-founded Otelic, a company who’s mission was “Happiness at work”. My co-founders and I had all experienced less than ideal company cultures and wondered if there was anything we could do. We wanted to help turn bad company cultures into good company cultures. It turned out to be a hard problem. So hard that we ultimately decided to focus on helping good company cultures shine rather than trying to fix bad company cultures. We created “Instagram for work” which helped companies with great cultures show them off. In the end life took us in different directions, but the problem space stuck with me.
There is no one great company culture. People are different and value different things. Some want to work remotely at an ambitious company, some want to work in an office at a relaxed company. Some value live/work balance, some value winning at all costs. Peoples values change over time. Some start out wanting live/work balance and then switch to win at all costs. However, regardless of cultural or value differences I strongly believe that when we know each other better, we work better together.
With that in mind I explored many ideas over the years. BetterTogether was initially conceived as a personal relationship app. You use a dating app to find someone and BetterTogether to have a healthy relationship with them. That dream still lives on but the start needed to be simpler. That simpler place turned out to be a BetterTogether for teams with Q&A as the focus. If knowing each other better helps us work better together, how do we get to know each other better? The same way we get to know anything, we ask questions and pay attention to the answers.
I think you’ll be surprised how effective BetterTogether’s Q&A is. You can skip questions you don’t want to answer and add questions you do want to answer. It’s simple, effective, and fun. I hope it exceeds your expectations and that you’ll let me know either way.
Thank you,
Sean