company-values

Company Values is a business-advisory skill that helps founders define the values and culture of a minimalist company, channeling the philosophy of Sahil Lavingia's The Minimalist Entrepreneur. It solves the problem of founders hiring before deciding what kind of company people should want to work for. Its core premise is that values are how you establish culture before you hire, that good values are non-obvious and sometimes polarizing, and that they should be written as stories rather than generic two-word slogans.

The skill explains why values matter (they guide everyday and extreme behavior, attract the right people and repel the wrong ones, enable accountability, and let a company scale beyond the founder) and offers Gumroad's own values as worked starting points: Judged by the Work, Seek Superlinearities, Everyone is a CEO, and Dare to Be Open, each with concrete illustrative statements. It then guides the user through creating their own values with pointed prompts, such as what you believe that most people don't, how people should behave when no one is watching, what you'd fire someone for even if they perform well, and what you'd celebrate even if it didn't help the bottom line. It covers operationalizing values in job posts, onboarding, and feedback, revisiting them as the company grows, and includes notes on remote work and asynchronous, availability-based (not surveillance-based) accountability. The defined output is a draft of three to five values with descriptions and example stories, plus how each shows up in hiring and daily work and what each does not mean.

The target users are founders and early leaders of small or minimalist businesses who are codifying culture, preparing to hire, or articulating what their company stands for. It is purely advisory prose with no code or tooling.