Hangout is more than an app, we are a mindset, a culture. Our team is built on values that we believe are important to represent in our company and our product. Our mission is to spread these values through a community. We, as a team, want to have fun building what the customers need. Our work is something we enjoy, we're instilling our values into something tangible.
In today's technological world, it is too easy to push off human interaction and replace it with mindless internet browsing. Along with that, its difficult to plan hang outs with friends. There is no solution to make hanging out easier, and there are countless barriers stopping people from meeting.
We want people to spend less time planning events and more time with their friends. Organizing gatherings with friends is hard, and many people face friction or awkwardness in creating these hangouts. There's not a good way to easily maintain connections with friends.
Our team, media, and product exemplify values of acceptance, connection, and exploration. We want to lead our company by example, and so we make it our priority to be open and personable with each other and our customers. Our company exemplifies diversity and comradery in every interaction.
Our product fixes this problem very simply. By creating a casual scheduler, we have opened the doors to making it easier to hangout with your friends. Finding a time to meet is often times the most complicated aspect of planning a hangout, and with app and web integration, scheduling becomes less awkward and more productive.
Along with finding a time, the scheduler model provides additional benefits. Initializing a hangout becomes simple and less awkward, and app integrations will allow for streamlined responses.
While developing our vision, we have simultaneously created a culture around how we work as a team. We have learned to do our best work through exemplifying the values below.
Accountable and Helpful
Fun and Playful
Empathetic and Encouraging
Diverse and Respectful
Valuable and Effective
Overall, our team works best when we strive to understand one another. We are full of potential energy and through these values, we are turning it into actionable results.
We will always value our customers and their feedback on our product. We will show that they are valued by listening to them, being open and responsive, and forming close connections. Our product is built on the foundation of our users, and so it is imperative that we treat them with the utmost importance.
Our future employees must exemplify the core company values both in their person and their work.
For Aibek, being interested in the Hangout mission is important for longer term team members.
For Victoria, people who enjoy learning and are open to new ideas are good candidates.
For Ben, being able to speak up and voice opinions is important.
All these qualities should be considered in potential team members. People will be here for different reasons, but we want to make working with Hangout as enjoyable as possible. As a team, we will work best if we are united and open.
We strongly believe in the importance of diversity. Without it, innovation becomes stagnant. Voicing opinions is important in maintaining the environment of diversity, as is learning and listening to other perspectives.
"We are one of the most diverse teams out there, we learn so much from each other. It can be a challenge sometimes, and it took us some time to learn about each other and how we work in different ways." - Aibek
Our team comes from all over the world, with Aibek from Kazakhstan, Vincent from Korea, Julie from China, Aamir from India, and Ben and Victoria from the West coast of the United States. The diversity in our backgrounds strengthens our team and allows for new ideas to flow. Like Aibek says, I can be difficult when we disagree on something, but without disagreement there is no room for growth. Our individual ideas make us a better team, and sharing these ideas makes us a better company.