Values

Everybody at HASH should contribute towards — and operate with — a high level of social trust.

Trust is confidence that others will act in alignment with your interests. In high-trust environments, people are happier and move faster. Statements can be taken in good faith. Assertions don't need to be questioned. Transaction costs collapse, friction disappears, and individual performance improves — because nobody wants to let others down.

We seek to build generalized trust: standards and expectations that transfer across teams and people within the organization, even when working with someone you've never met before.

Act predictably

Own your own work. You own the delivery of your work — ensuring it's on time, meets requirements, and meets quality criteria. Taking ownership doesn't mean being the project leader; it means taking responsibility. You'll be held to account, and celebrated. Possible confounding factors should be anticipated and communicated in advance. Delivery risks should be highlighted clearly and ahead of time.

Communicate clearly, and early. When you become aware of important information, communicate it to others as soon as possible. This includes anything that may jeopardize commitments you've made, feedback around issues you've observed, or changes in circumstances that affect others.

Always exceed expectations. Expect great things of yourself and your colleagues. Treat one another with respect. Always seek to overdeliver, and inspire one another to go further.

Disagree and commit. We're all on the same side. Certain decisions will inevitably be made that we don't all agree with, and paths taken that some think are mistaken. In such cases, we disagree and commit. Most decisions are reversible. It's far better to move quickly with 70% of the information than to stall in pursuit of certainty. Once a direction is set, commit to it sincerely — don't passively resist.

Act for the company

Be utilitarian. Do what's best for the whole organization and optimize globally, not just locally.

Work productively with colleagues. Consider the impacts of your actions on others. Whether you're writing code that others will review or maintain, or scheduling meetings, think about the impact on colleagues, users, and stakeholders. Proactively seek out information, ask for clarifications, and get help. And when someone inevitably makes a mistake, assume ignorance instead of malice.

Be self-aware

Engage in honest, regular self-reflection. Know your own strengths and shortcomings, on both personal and organizational levels. Solicit awkward feedback. Practice things that seem hard or unnatural. Share with others where you'd like to improve, and ask them to help you.

Embrace shame, in moderation. Know when shame is healthy and when it's an obstacle. Never be afraid to ask questions and admit you don't know something, own a mistake that was yours, or back down from a bad position mid-debate.

Be mission-focused

We live in a highly politicized world. We believe as an organization that we can have the highest net-positive impact by focusing on our mission. The positive externalities of eliminating information failure, even partially, are enormous. Our goal of globally democratizing access to the best means of making decisions is what drives us.

Most startups fail. Even those that raise investment and generate revenue face intense competition from markets where different cultural norms and regulatory environments exist. The AI industry represents an extreme case of this.

Working with urgency helps us move fast and keep timelines short. Moving fast lets us learn more per unit time and make contact with reality more frequently. Lessons learned compound. Going fast makes us focus on what's important — there's no time to waste.

Focus on the most important thing

Prioritize ruthlessly. Start with what is both urgent and critical. Once those tasks are exhausted, move to the critical but non-urgent. You will never exhaust the supply of truly critical work. If a task seems trivial in the light of "the most important thing you could be working on", it's probably not the right thing to focus on.

Be highly responsive

We expect everybody to reply to inbound enquiries quickly and to be responsive to their colleagues. Trust only emerges when people can be relied upon to act in a timely way.

Default to action

Most decisions are changeable. It's better to deliver something real today than something maybe better later.

Default to ASAP

In all your work — arranging meetings, following up with candidates, deciding whether to ship — default to the earliest possible date a thing can be done. This doesn't mean it always makes sense to do things immediately, but it almost always does, far more often than we individually like to think.

Time lag between opportunity and action is one of the strongest predictors of eventual success.

Small, tight teams

We move fast in small teams, with ambitious targets. Smaller teams reach alignment more easily, have fewer communication overheads, keep each other accountable, make decisions more quickly, and ultimately ship faster. They are also more fun to be on, and contributions feel more meaningful.

We invest in attracting, growing, and retaining the best because long-tail performers, resources, and ideas typically deliver outsized returns. All investments compound over time, and even marginally higher returns maintained over time result in ever-growing gaps between competitors and ourselves. The best begets the best: top talent attracts other top talent, and the best resources and tools attract the best people to work with them.

Grow the best people

We screen intensively when hiring. The things that matter most to us: an ability to express oneself clearly, especially in writing; sharp problem-solving skills; proactivity and an inclination to take action; knowing the bounds of your knowledge and seeking to expand them; enthusiasm for best practices and strong organization; and ultimately being a "manager of one" — someone who can drive the business forward independently, and proactively seek out direction when required.

We give people a high degree of autonomy and ownership. At every level, people are expected to contribute towards architecture, roadmap, and strategy — these are not responsibilities reserved for senior leadership alone.

Use the best tools

Providing the best conditions for work allows us to attract the best people. It also lets them do the best work possible. Investing in tools minimizes friction between people and mission, and reduces the risk of exogenous events interfering with our ability to focus on what's important. In some areas, using the best tools means building them ourselves.

Write the best playbook

Decisions made, architecture choices, client interactions — we write things down. For the benefit of remote colleagues, future colleagues, and honest introspection. Capturing and organizing knowledge is step one in eliminating information failure within HASH itself.

Deliver the best product

By investing in being the best — growing the best people, using the best tools, and writing the best playbook — we expect to deliver the best product.

Assess based on impact

Avoid judgment based on inputs alone. Instead, focus on results. Judge experiments on their outcomes. Judge people on their work output, not the time they spend at their desks.

Public commitment is a form of costly signaling that builds trust. It diminishes optionality but builds confidence — setting expectations, establishing standards, and allowing us to develop a reputation over time.

What the firm commits to

We publish our mission, our values, and specific policies and processes that we believe showcase us in a positive light or that we want to be known for. We also make one-way commitments on things we think are important:

• Open source — we commit to only ever becoming more open. Read more about our open-source commitment.
• Quality standards — we commit to only ever strengthening them.
• Delivery dates — we commit to specific timelines for features, products, and services.

What we all commit to

We expect our employees (and the partners we work with) to commit "publicly" to their colleagues: to deadlines, to solving hard problems, and to ambitious goals. When you say you'll do something, do it. When circumstances change, communicate early.