Being nice is contagious. Good or bad, it spreads. When building out Mooch, one of the first things we focused on was the brand experience. How can we build a company that can deliver a great experience? Too often companies focus on creating a compelling product that they forget about the values.
There Are No Customers, Only Partners
When Mooch was formed, we had no product and no clear roadmap. One thing was certain and that is there will be no "customers" or "users" only "partners." This is true all the way down to the code level, where our programming code won't work if the words customers or users is used. Same for our Slack channel that we use for our team, if we refer to people as customers it will autocorrect to partners. It sounds excessive but to build a company culture and experience that people deserve, it starts with the smallest habits. As a personal finance app that helps people budget, we needed to get one thing right and that is trust.
Word Of Mouth Is Very Powerful
"There's only one boss, the customer," Sam Walton once said. Building a great experience will have people talking to each other. Word of mouth is very powerful. In our marketing we do a lot of direct to partner marketing on our TikTok and Instagram. Though it's known that direct partner marketing doesn't scale well, it was very important to us to talk directly to our audience and build that foundation. With this in place, we can slowly trickle into other distribution channels, knowing that our base is working well.
Treating Our Team Right Goes A Long Way
It doesn't end at treating partners the way you deserve to be treated. Treating our team the right way goes a long way. At Mooch we offer 7 weeks PTO, unlimited sick days, a yearly team retreat (stay tuned!), flexible work accommodation, and offer a competitive health plan. As a start up that's focused on product and growth it may sound counter intuitive where every dollar should be spent on product and marketing. For us, a strong foundation and lasting organization means treating our team right. It is at the core of a successful organization to allow teams to grow, our partners to grow, and develop and prosper when the organization prospers.
We spoke with Deborah Yang, CEO and Co-founder of Daizy, a sustainability insights app for conscious investing. Deborah talks us through sustainability and investing, the marriage of commercial and the ability to do good, and the revolution of democratization of finance.
