Company Values That Scale for Years
Recurly just turned seven years old. It seems like yesterday that we elected to found a company based on the belief that the world was moving towards a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model. We believed that lightweight, flexible, nimble billing systems would become a competitive requirement for companies seeking to align their offers with the desires of their customers in the most pleasing ways.
We foresaw that products, apps, services, media, entertainment and many other products and services would be consumed in a ‘pay-as-you-go’ fashion. We also knew that this would require a different mindset from that of traditional enterprise software vendors who tend to see bigger solutions as being synonymous with better.
We’ve taken a different approach. We’ve always believed in the importance of eliminating friction between the subscription provider and the subscriber, throughout the entire course of the customer journey.
As Recurly turns seven, we’d like to reflect on the values that guided our company as we’ve grown through several stages of maturity. We’ve grown up with thousands of our customers—some have gone public, others have been acquired for billions of dollars all with Recurly powering the core of their billing operations.
We’ve learned a tremendous amount from our customers along the way and have nothing but gratitude to express for their hard-driving feedback and relentless passion for delivering frictionless user experiences to their subscribers. Billing is a central component to any good user experience, and when it comes to subscription commerce, there is a high bar required to continually exceed the expectations that subscribers maintain throughout their journey.
As our company has scaled and matured, we are all very proud of the way in which our company values have also scaled with us along the way. With two offices and over 130 employees, Recurly’s values have been important in shaping our culture to continually reinforce our direction and priorities. Â
It all starts with the customer.
Coupled with a relentless pursuit of solving problems in a minimalist way.
And an unyielding passion to continually improve on the present.
With a willingness to seek the best answers and outcomes, but not get stuck on delivering perfection all at once.
We encourage debate and intellectual sparring to push towards the best outcomes. By the same token, we also know that constant debate can impede progress so we couple it with a need to decide quickly and move initiatives forward.
When coupled with the prior value of ‘Iterating Everything,’ we’ve grown comfortable knowing that we can move quickly toward a desired outcome in smaller steps rather than biting off every bit of a given initiative all at once.
Succeeding in subscription commerce requires a mastery of many intersecting disciplines and a mindset oriented towards constant learning and inquiry. The axis of time either works for you or against you. Seven years into our journey, we continue to accumulate a knowledge base and perspective gained by powering over $3.5 billion in transaction volume. The axis of time has given us an amazing competitive advantage which we proudly share with our customers.
We are now more excited than ever to build upon our seven year anniversary milestone and forge ahead to deliver successful business results for current and future Recurly customers. We are thankful for the opportunity and the trust that our customers place in us to deliver breakout results together well into the future.
~ Dan Burkhart, CEO, Recurly
