effy’s Culture and Values

I want to share the culture we live at effy, for new volunteers and prospects looking to join. Thanks to my brother in arms Christoph for writing these with me!

Hi, and welcome to effy.

One thing before we start, and this is cliché, but:

effy is only as good as its people.

Schools trust us to bring them amazing and inspiring content, entrepreneurs trust us to not waste their time. Most importantly, students trust us with showing them a path to their future.

Trust is essential. Adding to the already mentioned ones, we need to be able to trust each other.

This is only possible, if we have excellent people. And here’s the kicker: what makes an organization great, and fun to be a part of? Not the amount of drinks we plan and organize, but the quality of people in the team, and the value we create together.

We believe in working collaboratively, as a collective, not as a group of individuals.

This means, we want you to apply yourself. To actively contribute — to ask, “hey, how can I help”, or “hey, I know what else we could do”.

We’re not going to ask you to work off tasks, we want you to apply yourself, offer your help, find things to work on, and execute well.

As entrepreneurs we think ownership is essential. We want you to own your projects. We want you to drive them, thinking of creative ways to enhance them, to develop them, to move them forward.

Of course, the team will always be there to help and give advice.

effy is a space to learn, a place to prove yourself and to try things. We want you to grow, to experience new things, to get to know amazing people and have a good time.

Think of it as this: Each of us has a small project which each person owns. Together, all these small projects add up and are one big project that we own as a collective. Most, if not all of these small projects are interlinked, maybe even interdependent. We are all personally responsible for creating and finishing great projects, to enable an amazing grand project.

effy is not for profit — to be brutally honest — effy doesn’t earn a dime, quite the contrary, it has cost some of us some money. We are not paying you, so we understand that sometimes other things are going to be more important.

Each one of us has a job or is studying. We all have things to do. That is completely ok. Some weeks are going to be busy. Some weeks, work or uni are going to have to be priority. That is ok. We understand. But please — communicate! “Hey guys, this week I have an important exam/delivery, so I’m going to have to take it easy”. Perfect, that’s all you have to say.

But be honest and transparent. Be fair to your teammates.

We want you to be committed. We want you to enjoy what you, and take time for it. effy is not something you should be doing, or probably can, by continuously putting in one hour a week. Some weeks — sure, but not every week. We expect you to join all company wide events/calls. A sign of respect for those preparing and organizing those.

effy is about a vision. effy is about inspiring and helping kids to do something with their life that matters. To show them how they can create something meaningful. effy is about building something — building something big. effy is about learning, about growing, about making each one of us better than we were when we joined. effy is about connecting people who give a shit, about people who want to achieve something and have an impact. And effy is also about having fun and enjoying that, but also enjoying all the other pleasures in life.

We’re serious about effy, and we’re serious about building something multinational. Be fair to those, who are putting their heart and souls into it.

As a closing statement, this amazing quote as a summary:

Happiness is not avoiding problems — Happiness is solving problems.

We look forward to building, solving and creating something with you!

• Trust
• Excellence
• Collectivism
• Self-motivation
• Ownership
• Development
• Honest Communication
• Passion
• Creating

A few more additional things:

Brilliant Jerks — We value our team spirit & fun more than success one person can give us. We’d rather have a good time with five people achieving something in a week, than a terrible day with one person.

In the link below, you can get an idea of what we want our culture to be. Take the time to read it — it is worth it! (10 mins — promise) Netflix Culture: Seven Aspects of our Culture Culture