How we work at Vera?
We want work at Vera to be challenging and fun.
Lead by example
- 1. Be a self-guided missile – Start with a vision and move forward with persistence and purpose.
- 2. We’re intentional about how we manage our energy and focus – Focus is your superpower—protect and train it.
- 3. Environment shapes outcome – Design your surroundings to support your best work.
- 4. Move the needle – Go beyond the task—create meaningful progress for others.
Build, Test, Learn - Repeat
- 5. Be obsessed with customer value – Talk to real users. Understand what they need. Deliver faster than expected.
- 6. Learn in the wild – Ship early. Test fast. Solve real problems, not imagined ones.
- 7. Plan for the last 20% – Value is only real when your work holds up in real-world use.
- 8. Don’t put on the blinkers – Set stop cues and reflect with intention. Momentum is nothing without direction.
- 9. Run through two-way doors and tiptoe through one-way – Know when to move fast, and when to move carefully.
Growth Mindset
- 10. Embrace the bumpy road – The journey won’t be smooth, but that’s where growth lives.
- 11. Always be learning – Curiosity compounds. Start before you feel ready.
- 12. Master of some, doer of many – Be flexible. Step up beyond your lane.
- 13. Strong opinions, weakly held – Have conviction, but stay open to change.
Communicate for Impact
- 14. Create a common lore – Define shared language so teams stay aligned and sharp.
- 15. High-context communication – Choose formats that reduce friction and help others move fast.
1. Be a self-guided missile
Start with a vision and move forward with persistence and purpose.
You can achieve anything you set your mind to. Begin with a clear vision of your goal, and map your path with purpose. Break big dreams into focused, achievable steps that match your time, energy, and resources. Move forward with confidence, passion, and persistence, because success isn’t just possible, it’s waiting for you.
2. We’re intentional about how we manage our energy and focus
Focus is your superpower—protect and train it.
Your focus is your superpower.
In a world overflowing with noise and distraction, your ability to concentrate is what sets you apart. Each day gives you a precious window, just 2 to 4 golden hours, for deep, meaningful work. This is your flow state, where time slows down, distractions melt away, and you operate at your absolute best, like an elite athlete in the zone.
The mind naturally wanders, but with intention and consistent practice, focus becomes a skill you can strengthen. The right mindset and tools don’t just help you resist distractions, they empower you to direct your energy, raise your game, and unlock the best version of yourself.
Remember: when you give your attention to just one or two things, your impact multiplies. You weren’t built to juggle everything at once, you were built to go deep, not wide.
Master your focus, and you’ll master your craft
3. Environment shapes outcome
Design your surroundings to support your best work.
Put the right person in the wrong environment, and even top performers can fall short. Your environment isn’t just background, it’s an active force that shapes your behavior, mindset, and results. Think of a professional athlete on game day. Everything is intentional, from the warm-up playlist to the lighting in the locker room, the gear laid out just right, the team rituals. These cues prepare the athlete to perform at their peak. They don’t leave their mindset to chance, and neither should you.
You don’t need to push harder, you need to set the stage better. When your environment supports who you want to be, focus becomes the default, not the exception.
4. Move the needle
Go beyond the task—create meaningful progress for others.
Make sure your work moves the needle. It’s not enough to just meet the requirement. That’s baseline. True impact comes when your work drives momentum, when it makes the next step faster, clearer, or more valuable for someone else.
Think of every task not as an end, but as a setup for what comes next. Your job isn’t just to kick the ball, it’s to move it to the next base.
It’s the difference between:
- Submitting the final document, or submitting it with a docdiff and well-placed comments so the reviewer can understand changes in seconds, not minutes.
- Sending a job offer, or taking the time to polish the candidate’s CV to reflect the narrative and role you see them growing into.
- Writing a basic investor update, or recording a Loom that explains the “why” behind the numbers and makes them feel part of the journey.
These are small differences in effort, but huge differences in outcomes. They show care, clarity, and ownership. They reduce friction, build trust, and accelerate progress.
Don’t aim to just deliver. Aim to move the needle. Every time.
5. Be obsessed with customer value
Talk to real users. Understand what they need. Deliver faster than expected.
Customer priorities aren’t just a consideration, they’re the priority. The fastest way to build something great is to stay close to the people you’re building it for.
Talk to customers directly. Don’t assume, don’t guess, go to the source. It’s often harder, but it’s where the real insights live. You’ll learn more from a 10-minute call than hours of internal debate.
Deliver value. Earn trust. Then do it again, faster.
6. Learn in the wild
Ship early. Test fast. Solve real problems, not imagined ones.
Optimise for failing fast. Most things can be done faster than expected, if you get creative and scrappy. Constraints force clarity.
Build like this: aim for a production-ready version in just 10% of your time budget. Not perfect, but real. Because the hardest problems aren’t theoretical, they show up in production, with real users, under real pressure.
Don’t wait for perfection. Ship early, break things where it matters, and learn in the wild.
7. Plan for the last 20%
Value is only real when your work holds up in real-world use.
No matter how good the work is, value is only created when it works in the real world. That last step, testing in context, checking for edge cases, validating assumptions, is where many things quietly fail.
It’s not just about whether it looks right or runs without errors. It’s about whether it truly delivers what it’s supposed to, in the hands of real users, under real conditions.
To avoid surprises:
- Run a real-world test, not just a theoretical one
- Create a pre-mortem: what could go wrong, and how would you know?
- Define success criteria and how you’ll measure it, so it’s clear what “done” really means
The final mile isn’t just QA, it’s making sure your work actually solves the problem it set out to.
8. Don’t put on the blinkers
Set stop cues and reflect with intention. Momentum is nothing without direction.
Start with sharp, data-driven assumptions. Build a plan, then execute with speed and conviction.
But set stop cues, intentional moments to pause, reflect, and adjust when momentum shifts:
- Time-based: “If we haven’t doubled activation rates by June, we challenge our onboarding strategy.”
- Milestone-based: “If 100 demos don’t land 10 deals, our messaging needs a rethink.”
- Trigger-based: “If CTR drops below 3.5%, we reassess our ad copy”
These cues aren’t signs to stop, they’re built-in prompts to level up.
Reflect. Refocus. Reinvent. Then push forward, bolder than before.
9. Run through two-way doors and tiptoe through one-way
Know when to move fast, and when to move carefully.
Not all decisions are equal. Some are easy to reverse, two-way doors. For these, move fast, test, and improve as we go.
Others are harder to undo, one-way doors, like changing system architecture or brand changes. These need care and alignment.
10. Embrace the bumpy road
The journey won’t be smooth, but that’s where growth lives.
Stay optimistic—but expect the unexpected.
The path to anything worthwhile is rarely smooth, and that’s a good thing. Every twist, setback, and so-called “failure” is proof that you’re in the game, growing, and doing what most people won’t dare to try.
You won’t win big without failing big first. So take the hits with curiosity, not shame. Learn fast, laugh when you can, and let the hard parts sharpen you—not shake you.
Don’t get too high on the wins or too low on the losses. Neither defines you.
What defines you is your willingness to keep showing up, stay curious, and keep moving—no matter how bumpy the road gets.
Success is in the process. Trust it. Enjoy it. Keep going.
11. Always be learning
Curiosity compounds. Start before you feel ready.
The best people aren’t the ones who know everything, they’re the ones who never stop learning. It’s a fire of curiosity that pushes you to explore, try, fail, and improve, every single day.
Don’t block yourself from doing something just because you don’t know how. That’s the point.
Don’t wait for permission. Don’t wait to “be ready.”
Learning compounds like interest, the earlier and more often you invest, the better you become.
12. Master of some, doer of many
Be flexible. Step up beyond your lane.
You might be an expert in one area, but real impact comes from your ability to wear multiple hats and adapt. That means staying aware of what falls outside your lane, and being curious and humble enough to learn it.
No matter how senior or experienced you are, never let ego or fear of failure stop you from diving into something new. Titles don’t build products. Teams do, and teams need people who step up wherever the work is.
Roll up your sleeves. Get your hands dirty. Be the kind of person who figures things out, even if it’s not “your job.”
13. Strong opinions, weakly held
Have conviction, but stay open to change.
Great decision-making starts with having a clear point of view. Leaders are expected to form strong opinions based on the best information available, but they must be ready to change those opinions when new evidence emerges.
This is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. The best ideas win, not the loudest voices. Strong opinions give direction. Holding them loosely allows for learning and improvement.
We value confidence without ego, and conviction without rigidity.
14. Create a common lore
Define shared language so teams stay aligned and sharp.
When different people refer to the same thing in different ways, or when you’re introducing a new concept, don’t let it slide. Stop. Define it clearly. Create a shared name or framework. Then socialize it, get buy-in, and stick to it.
This isn’t just about semantics, it’s about efficiency. Clear language removes ambiguity. It saves time, reduces cognitive load, and ensures that energy is spent solving problems, not decoding conversations.
If everyone’s using different words for the same thing, you’re already losing.
15. High context communication
Choose formats that reduce friction and help others move fast.
Choose the path that gives everyone else the most context, and minimizes back-and-forth. Your goal isn’t just to communicate, it’s to get the team as close as possible to taking action without needing to ask for more.
Every time you make someone pause to clarify, you introduce friction. Great collaborators remove that friction before it appears.
Here’s a rough hierarchy, from highest to lowest context:
- A review on something final and ready for production (e.g. a polished Pull Request)
- A Loom video walking through your thinking, preferred solution or changes A screenshot with helpful annotations
- A message with links to relevant docs or references
- A vague message that refers to things without including or summarizing them
- A “what do you think about this?” or “@a please check”
Always aim to communicate at the highest level of context possible for the situation. It saves time, sharpens understanding, and accelerates decisions.