Our Values as Our Lighthouse

I was having a conversation with an advisor the other day and he asked, “What will lead customers to trust you?” Trust is everything in our line of work, given that we work directly with the consumer. My answer was that an organization must have carefully thought about their values, and then they must walk the talk. At Konviv, we live and breathe our values.

When I first met my co-founder, Deep Datta, we connected immediately because of our shared values in the type of organization we wanted to create. Before anything else, we were crystal clear on the foundations that would uphold our organization. Deep and I spent weeks, maybe even months, thinking about the type of company we wanted to be. We came up with our vision statement and our values, and we ideated, discussed, and worked with our team until we arrived at a set of vision and values that felt right and that encompassed our particular company DNA and our raison d’etre.

Konviv has a solid foundation, with a clear understanding of our values which inform the decisions we make and don’t make. Our vision and values inform everything at Konviv — who we hire, what investors we speak to, what partnerships we consider, and even what interns we bring onboard. Roy Disney said, “it’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” We absolutely agree. Especially, for the toughest decisions, the ones where a LOT is on the line, that’s where values especially shine. When you have a tough call to make, you’ll be able to do so with confidence because you took the time to outline the values that matter to your organization.

The way we see our work, we are building a movement — a financial empowerment movement. Without a doubt, Konviv and our values, have been informed and shaped by our own lived experiences. We’ve lived paycheck-to-paycheck, we’ve overdrafted, we’ve lived in financial fear and anxiety and have seen the pain it has caused in the lives of our loved ones. We’re also a team with diversity at all levels — from being immigrants from all over the world, multicultural and multilingual millennials (frustrated by Siri correcting me when I write in Spanglish), to having had different socioeconomic upbringings. Our lived experiences and our diversity unequivocally have shaped our Konviv DNA and consequently, our values.

I have to say that it’s such a privilege to wake up everyday to work on technology that directly impacts the lives of the hardest-working people, the large majority of whom struggle with their finances. Konviv is our lives’ work, not something we’ll be doing for the next 5 years until we move on to our next adventure, but for the rest of our lives. And with our values as our lighthouse guiding us along the way, we look forward to seeing our vision of Financial Empowerment For All realized.

What follows is our Konviv Manifesto.

Our Vision:

Financial Empowerment For All

The Konviv Values:

1. Customer Obsessed — We exist, quite literally, to empower our users. Every decision that is made at Konviv is made with the end-user’s financial wellbeing in mind. Part of this value includes humility- making the time to make sure we truly understand our user, we don’t make assumptions of who they are or what they want. It includes bringing joy to every user interaction. Finally, it encompasses empowerment, a word that is absolutely core to Konviv — every day we are obsessively thinking, how can we best empower our users?
2. Heart- We CARE. We really fucking care (so much I used an expletive!). We care because we have been the user, because we have seen our friends and family live in financial fear and anxiety and we know we can, no we MUST, do better. We value each person’s unique experience and really, at the end of the day, we work so hard because we fucking care.
3. Honey Badgers- If there is an animal that best exemplifies Konviv as an organization, it would be the honey badger. At Konviv, we’re not scared of the hard and the uncomfortable, and we’re ridiculously resourceful. We take pride in our honey badger ways. Obstacle ahead? Honey badger don’t care. At Konviv we’re not afraid of hard work — we run 50-mile ultras, sleep at the office, and interview hundreds of strangers outside of Mi Pueblo (yes, that happened), if that’s what it takes. We are wildly resourceful and have an uncanny ability to precipitate resources. No doesn’t exist in our vocabulary, there is always a way to get it done.
4. Autodidact Ninjas- We consider self-teaching/learning to be of HUGE value at Konviv. We are ALWAYS pushing ourselves to learn something new. We read books (I read them… obsessively), read papers, get advice from experts (sit outside of their office hours for hours until they will talk to us, yes, this happened too), watch documentaries, take online classes, watch Youtube tutorials like it’s nobody’s business, do trainings to become better at what we do, and we continue growing and evolving in all areas of our lives. We are not asked to learn, learning and growing is part of our DNA and you couldn’t stop us from going out to learn even if you wanted to.
5. Extreme Initiative and Ownership- Execution, execution, execution. Konvivers are people who take the initiative and aren’t waiting to be told what to do. If we have an assignment, we do what it takes to get it done, and no one has to check-in on us to make sure it was done well. If things are not going as planned, we take ownership and responsibility over the situation and we drive the steps that need to be taken to make sure we reach our objective. We (over)communicate with our team, as collaboration and communication are key to successful execution.
6. Be BOLD- We are BOLD at Konviv. Being bold means that we think big, think outside the box, push the envelope, deconstruct old ways of thinking and seeing the world and come up with innovative, more efficient, accessible, and more inclusive ways to do things and create our product. Impossible? Pssshhh- try me.
7. Humor, Fun, and Celebration- At Konviv, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We make it a point to have fun, celebrate our big and small wins along the way, and get a few laughs in. We know how to laugh at ourselves, and sure, sometimes at each other (never in a mean way, though). We are each other’s biggest cheerleaders and are truly a team. People spend so much time at work these days, and at Konviv it’s important that we truly love and enjoy the work we are doing, each other’s company, and that we make a point to celebrate the small and big milestones in Konviv’s life, and in our personal lives, along the way.
8. Transparency- Transparency means that we are internally and externally transparent. Internally, we are excellent communicators and communicate often, we collaborate and share resources with our team and the rest of the company. We are transparent with our goals and progress to reach our goals. We are data obsessed. We love numbers and data. As a company, we are transparent with our users and community with our policies, our values, and our goals.
9. Diversity- At Konviv we value diversity of thought, lived experience, socio-economic backgrounds, race, religion, gender preference, you name it. When you come to work you should feel you can bring your whole (badass) self to the office. We make it a point to be good listeners, and value others’ points of view, and cultures. Being a super multi-cultural team, Konviv values all different cultures and backgrounds.