There are a lot of things that are difficult when it comes to creating a start-up. For StashUp, finding talent wasn't one of those things. We believe it came down to three key factors: we had a great idea, a firm vision, and we prioritized the development of our employer value proposition (EVP) before we assembled our team.
We knew that we had to be clear in our promise to attract and retain the talent we needed to get our product off the ground. We needed to ask ourselves "what do we want this company to look like one, three, five years down the road, and what do we want our shared experience to be?" And, most importantly, the answer had to resonate with our team.
Many start-ups offer ping pong tables. Some talk about their "culture", which is often arrived at after-the-fact. But a good EVP is the shared experience that you promise each and every team member when you bring them on board. It tells them how your organization is different, beyond what we like to call "hygiene factors" -- including pay, benefits, location, etc.
We arrived at three core values to our EVP. These are the founding principles upon which we make any leadership decision, and they are pretty simple.
everyHere is the promise we made each team member before they joined the team.
Do What's Right
As members of the StashUp team, we always put people first: our colleagues and the users of our product. You will find yourself in an ethical, moral company that centers its decisions on creating pro-social impacts.
More Autonomy, Less Bureaucracy
We only bring on driven, entrepreneurial colleagues who understand our Vision. We encourage our colleagues to take thoughtful risks knowing that failure is not just acceptable, it is good. This means less time spent running ideas up the food chain and more time spent improving our product and creating better outcomes for colleagues and customers.
Better Than Benchmark Benefits
We always look to reward our colleagues and we aim to do that with a better than competitive benefits package. And that doesn’t mean pool tables. We will seek to provide outstanding healthcare, parental leave, education reimbursement, and more.
While we are pre-revenue right now, which makes the last pillar more aspirational, the former two are principles that we hold dear. Because we set this EVP down in stone before we began recruiting, we were able to find a community of like-minded professionals who were ready to join us. Based on these promises, we now have a team with fifty years of experience who are ready to bring the StashUp Vision to life.