Nearby

Nearby's Operating Principles

We’re in the business of business.

The primary way we can serve our mission is to build a resilient, substantial business that is here to stay. We serve our mission and our stated public benefits by bringing our merchants revenue through our marketplace.

Community is our edge.

We seek ways to amplify the power of merchant communities, the connections between a town’s businesses and its residents, and see the connections between our work and thriving cities of every size. We shine the spotlight on the people behind the businesses in a community, and celebrate them in ways they can’t easily do for themselves.

Speak up if there’s food in my teeth.

We communicate with honesty and purpose. When we disagree, we listen to one another and then commit to a path forward as a team.

We embrace shortcuts in service of learning.

We look for the simplest way to solve a problem until we have more information. If we can fix a problem with a spreadsheet instead of a tool we might take months to build, we celebrate this as a win for the team. As we understand a problem better, our inclination to invest in infrastructure or processes that will help us scale increases.

We see humans.

We get to know the actual humans in the communities we enter, and listen and learn from them. We often refer to our merchant partners by their first names. We maintain a spirit of optimism and curiosity about the people we interact with, and make new friends wherever we go - starting right here with the humans on our team.

We do a good job.

We bring creativity and quality to our work, and are proud of what we put out into the world. We take risks and when we fail to meet our own goals, we reflect on why in the open. We value being a team of people who work hard at their crafts. We can hold in balance the idea that we are on a mission, but we also each have jobs to do well.