As an organization, we need to collectively aim for a greater purpose. Beyond a paycheck, what makes us get up in the morning and bring our best to our work? What is our purpose as an organization? A concise mission statement helps us define who we want to be. The vision statement communicates the impact that we hope to have. We filter our decisions through those statements and they give us a clearer idea on the right path to take.

At Helcim, our mission is to build the world's most loved payments company. Love is a bold word to use, but bringing humanity and heart behind our decisions has always been a huge part of who we are. Love also encapsulates so many aspects of our service that we strive to make great. If our customer service isn't great, if our payments are not fast, if our software is not seamless, then merchants will not love us.

We're passionate about small businesses, and the giant impact they have on the economy and our society. We care about how they are treated. We care about them not getting dragged through the mud by an unkind payments industry. We care about their experience with us and the value they get from our service. Ultimately, we truly care that our merchants love the choice they made in picking Helcim.

We're also very ambitious, and we want to build a giant payment and technology company right here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We want our mission to reflect that, and we feel that by aiming to be the "world's most" helps solidify that goal. We want to show the world that you can build big, successful companies while never losing your heart.

Often misspelled as Helium, Hellsim, Helcium, it has six letters "H E L C I M" and is pronounced "hel-sim". When we started the company, we picked an old latin word with little meaning so that we could mold the world's understanding of this word to be singularly and entirely our own:

Helcim means doing things right, even when it's harder.

At a young age, doing the right thing seems obvious. Be honest, be kind, be fair. Those lessons are repeated throughout our childhood and children take pride in seeing themselves as stewards of these values.

But when you enter the business world, things blur and those values are constantly being questioned. "They screwed everyone over and they're now rich - does doing the right thing get in the way of success?" As we built this company in an industry known for deceptive practices, we constantly faced those decisions. "Do we take the easy way, but erode trust? Or do we take the hard way, and hope that our team and our customers will appreciate our decision?"

We decided early that the hard way was our way. That short-termism and profit-at-all-costs is what ultimately leads to the downfall of companies. We believe that the 21st century is bringing a new generation of companies that will rise above the old ways of doing business. That this is the era of companies with values and character.

People want to be part of something they believe in, whether that is as a team member, a merchant or a shareholder. By being that company, we believe that we will continue to attract the best people. These passionate and talented individuals will continue to create the best products. Our merchants will feel appreciated and spread the word about our brand, and we will ultimately build a wildly successful company that will outlast others.

So when facing a tough decision, we continue to ask ourselves "Is this the way of the Helcim?" That question will help us determine how to proceed.

Be honest, be kind, be fair.

Do things right, even when it is harder.

This is what Helcim means.

How do you feel when you walk in the office in the morning? Are you excited about working with a bunch of passionate people on something meaningful? Or do you get a pit in your stomach because of disgruntled co-workers, bad bosses or unchallenging work? Our collective goal is to make sure that it is the former, and we're all responsible for creating a supportive environment for everyone that joins our company.

We don't hire assholes at Helcim - no matter how talented or smart they are. If your intentions are to hurt others for your own sake or put your ambition in front of the needs of the team, then this is not the company for you, and we will promptly show you the door.

This is very much a "we" company, not an "I" company. People that thrive at Helcim and advance their careers are those that devote themselves to helping their peers succeed. Regardless of age, gender, orientation, ethnicity, background or even technical ability, when a new team member is introduced the immediate reaction for everyone around them should be to build up that person, help them learn and help them succeed.

Conflict is healthy - we don't avoid it and we do it right

We're an organization that builds people up, but that doesn't mean that we avoid conflict. You'll often find team members wholeheartedly disagree on topics and debate on the best course of action, but this is always done professionally, respectfully and with the right intent - to make Helcim better, our team better, our product better, and our merchants happy.

Further learning: Book: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

We believe that in order for you to do your best work, you need to feel trusted.

Trust is a two-way street - we must trust you, so that in return you can feel comfortable trusting the people around you. As a Helcim team member, you will be entrusted with a lot of responsibility and information. All our livelihoods are dependent on you honoring that trust. As a financial technology company, the stakes are high. Our merchants put their trust in us to keep their information safe, their businesses online and their transactions flowing.

In exchange for that trust that we place in you, we ask you to trust that we will support you in solving issues and learning from them. It is ok to make mistakes; it is part of the process of learning and trying new things. We ask that you're upfront about those mistakes and communicate them early to your fellow team members so that problems can be fixed quickly before they become calamities. We're in this together.

Open-book management

As a Helcim team member, you'll also become a shareholder through our equity / stock-option program. Understanding how our business works, how we survive and prosper, and how we make money, is an important part of learning how you can contribute to our collective success. Once again, trust and transparency are key to that, so we practice open-book management.

The company's financial statements are open and accessible to anyone at the company. These financial statements are extremely sensitive and impact our ability to do business, establish banking relationships, access capital, and reveal a lot about how we operate - so treat them with care.

Further learning: Book: Open-Book Management by John Case Helcim Summary: Open-Book Management

Taking ownership is the most important action you can take at Helcim - not just for your career growth, but also to build trust with your teammates and develop as a professional. If you look at any leader at Helcim, this is the common trait that you will find and serves as a major factor for all career advancements and hires. It's impossible to cover all the scenarios, but this is what ownership looks like:

• You openly admit when you've made a mistake and how you intend to fix it or prevent it in the future.
• You don't make excuses.
• You don't blame circumstances or other employees.
• You follow through to completion.
• You work to exceed expectations.
• You pay attention to the details.
• You actively improve your skills.
• You take initiatives to improve the effectiveness of your function.
• You take responsibility for everything that affects your task.
• You help everyone you can, never saying "that's not my job".
• You get it done, and do it well.

Taking ownership makes you trustworthy and dependable, and this translates well to any role or task that you take at Helcim. Ask yourself: who would you rather work with - someone that takes ownership, or someone that is negative, delivers shoddy work, and blames others or the environment for the shortcomings of a deliverable? So follow things through to completion, pay attention to the details, actively increase the effectiveness of your function, and admit your mistakes. This never goes unnoticed, and is one of the biggest factors when making major career advancement decisions.

Demonstrating true ownership in your work makes you dependable, and dependability translates well into all roles - both current and future.

Further learning: Video: TED | Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink Book: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

Bringing affordability to the small businesses that we serve isn't just a business strategy; it's a cornerstone of our mission and values. Ensuring that there is transparency and affordability in our pricing is one of the fastest ways to build trust with our merchants.

Affordability doesn't necessarily need to equate "free" or having rock-bottom rates. Instead, we are driven by the belief that every product we make must create true value for the businesses we serve. Affordability isn't just about lowering the costs of running a business; it's also about creating amazing tools at no additional cost.

We always negotiate with vendors.

This belief in affordability extends to the way we operate our own business. We're constantly negotiating with vendors, making sure our costs stay competitive so we can pass that affordability on to our merchants. Therefore every dollar we save matters, and frugality is woven into our culture.

Our culture book sets the foundation for who we are and how we work horizontally as an organization. Yet each of our departments operate with their own unique challenges and responsibilities that also require a tailored approach. You will find that every team at Helcim has their own internal mission and guiding principles.

You will find that the team's guiding principles are written in a way that clearly defines both the positive behaviors as well as the opposite behaviors we want to avoid. This approach ensures that our principles are actionable and practical, not just vague aspiration statements.

This method of writing helps us prevent misinterpretation and ensures that everyone understands the tangible expectations behind each principle.

We've found that team-specific guiding principles help us foster consistency in how work gets done within each of our teams. When everyone knows what the guiding principles are, decision making, accountability, and collaboration becomes easier, and teams are more capable of achieving their best.

Adopted from Netflix's culture book, we subscribe to the concept of "talent density". It means that in order to achieve great things, our organization must have a high concentration of amazing individuals.

As part of our bottom-up hiring culture we don't limit our "talent" label to only experienced senior professionals, we also recognize the potential in junior professionals with strong work ethic and an appetite to learn from high-performers. Ultimately, we measure talent as those with a passion to grow.

We don't settle for adequate

In order to achieve talent density, we expect our managers to bring this mindset to every team in every function of our organization. We do not subscribe to the notion that a team can be composed of both high-performance individuals mixed with "adequate" performers.

The power of being surrounded by great people

We believe something amazing happens when you become surrounded by talented, hard-working, and kind yet passionate people. It brings out the best in yourself and you start aiming higher and achieve a level of excellence that you didn't know was possible.

Simply said, talented people want to work with other talented people. When you are surrounded by top talent, you are more likely to be inspired, motivated, and challenged, leading to better work and better outcomes.

Everyone says that they love businesses, yet the actions of most companies actually suggest otherwise. Compared to enterprises, owner-operated businesses typically get worse pricing, sub-par customer service and are treated as just another number on a spreadsheet.

We take a different path and aim to always empower our merchants, no matter how small.

First, we are empathic to the uphill battle that is the life of a small business owner.

The odds are against them as they compete in a world ever more dominated by monopolies and giants. We realize that every one, no matter the size, represents the sweat, blood and tears of individuals pouring themselves into creating a successful business and transforming their economic security.

Our appreciation for the hard work and ambition of small business owners is in-part why we are so focused on bringing pricing affordability to our merchants, as well as ensuring that everyone, no matter the size, gets access to amazing customer service.

Second, we put as much value in our existing merchants as we do in potential new ones.

It is so easy for companies to get overly focused on enticing new customers while taking their existing ones for granted. We recognize that our existing merchants are our most powerful advertising channel, and how we treat them everyday ultimately will determine our ability to attract more.

With each of our actions we must first ask ourselves how it will be perceived by the merchants that have continued to put their trust in our company, year after year.

We want Helcim to have as little organizational barriers as possible when it comes to communication and solving problems. You can talk to your manager, your manager's manager, you can talk to executives, and you can talk to Nic - without the need to ask for anyone else's permission to do so.

If you believe that there is a communication breakdown that is stopping a problem from being resolved or have a new solution that could benefit the whole company, we encourage you to break hierarchical structures or department silos and find the right person to communicate with.

We find that writing is critical in taking blurry ideas and turning them into clear concepts. While a board full of sticky notes has its place and is a great way to capture a wide-range of possibilities, the format does not enforce constraints. Writing down a plan in a document takes that world of possibilities and forces you to distill it into something that is clear and executable.

We also believe that some of the best collaboration and debates happen in shared-documents, allowing a wide-range of stakeholders to asynchronously learn, debate and become part of the decision making process.

Reducing unnecessary meetings

The ability to asynchronously absorb information through reading is also key in reducing unnecessary meetings. You will be hard-pressed to see meetings at Helcim where teams simply "present" information; we instead encourage that information to be put in the form of writing for it to be read prior to a meeting. Meetings at Helcim are focused on debate and decision making.

We also find meetings to be an ineffective structure for "brainstorming" or idea generation. While it may seem like a cliche that the best ideas come when you are in the shower - our experience has shown that there is very much a truth that the best ideas come from moments of solidarity, often when we are doing something outside work.

We believe that a strong reading and writing culture fosters collaboration and ensures transparency through the ability to share information more broadly across our organization. And just as importantly, our reading and writing culture reduces unnecessary meetings (something we can all rejoice in).

Based on Sam Walton's "sundown rule", all emails, voicemails and phone calls should be answered within the same business day. This is especially important when dealing with merchants and partners, who should never be left in the dark for long. The sundown rule is important to remaining a fast and high-functioning organization.

There are roles that require you to always be on top of your emails and other methods of communication, such as Customer Service, Risk Analysts, PR, etc. For these, you should be trained by your manager and peers on how to manage your daily workflow, including emails.

The sundown rule is more relevant to roles that do not revolve around frequent email communication, such as developers, videographers, designers, etc. These roles typically require high-focus on a single task at hand - emails, calls and chat are distractions that break concentration.

Our minimum expectation is that you check your email three times per day: first thing in the morning, at noon and at the end of the day.

Doing so will allow you to stay in the loop with any internal and external communication, while allowing you to do focused work for the majority of the day.

When the communicated items or requests need more time to resolve, the expectation is still to reply within the same business day, and communicate a clear timeline on when an answer will be provided. We implement this within reasonable limits - it is ok to respond the next day if the communication is non-urgent and came in late in the day.

In most circumstances, we believe that point form is the best format when writing emails. Point-form emails are easy to write, but most importantly, easy to read and absorb by the receiving party - this should be your goal if you want a good outcome from the communication.

You should shy away from writing long 'essays' with large paragraphs, as these require a lot more energy to read and understand, and therefore decrease the chance of your message to be understood. Point-form emails force you to extract the important data that you want to communicate, and force you to make sentences short and clear.

Point-form emails should still have proper sentence structure. We recommend for them to be written in the following structure:

Tone and politeness

It is also important to remain professional and polite with all of our communication, both internally and externally. We should clearly communicate when things are urgent or when errors have been made, but we should never personally attack or be rude.

A good rule-of-thumb is to assume that all emails are public and could be read by anyone. When dealing with an especially frustrating situation, ask yourself "How comfortable would I be if this email was on the front-page of a newspaper?" Always communicate in a way that you can be proud of and stand behind, especially once emotions have calmed.

You might think that design does not impact you because it is unrelated to your work (unless you're a designer) - but design is more than just making things pretty.

Visual design is about effectively communicating ideas, tone, and how others perceive the quality of your work.

Regardless if you're composing an email, creating a report, outlining a sales proposal, or preparing a company-wide presentation, how your document is visually presented will impact its ability to convey its message. It's easy to say "I suck at design", or "that's the design team's problem", but as Helcim team members and professionals, we set a high-bar for ourselves in everything that we do.

The expectation isn't for everyone else to become great designers. The Helcim design team is ultimately responsible for our style guide, brand identity and making sure that every major design we publish elevates our merchant's experience. The expectation is for everyone to show effort in understanding the basic principles and therefore become better communicators.

Further learning: Video Series: Beginning Graphic Design by GCFLearnFree.org

We believe that there are two types of organizations when it comes to career development: ones where you are handed your career growth on a silver platter, and ones where you take it yourself. At Helcim, it is the latter.

That doesn't mean that you are on your own - we spend a ton of resources in training and programs that help you develop skills and learn new things. But it is ultimately you that has to take ownership and initiative to seize those opportunities and advance in your career.

Your manager and skip-level manager are two of the most important people to help you align on what career growth looks like and what steps you can take to get where you want to be. But it is you that has to ask, and it is you that needs to put in the work.

We pride ourselves on the number of Helcimers that started their career at our organization and grew their roles and responsibilities over time. We give juniors a chance to start their careers at Helcim, we invest in their growth, and we provide ample opportunities to take on more challenges and grow.

Combining the right balance of junior and experienced professionals

While bottom-up is a key part of our culture, it only works if our junior professionals have the support and leadership of veterans that have seen it before. Helcim also invests in recruiting experienced talent and placing them in all functions of our organization.

We believe that teams across our company will typically thrive when they have the right balance between juniors that are eager to learn, and experienced professionals that can teach and help guide them. Overtime we've found that this balance is typically a 3:1 ratio, although it will vary from team to team.

A company-wide commitment

Bottom-up hiring demands a strong commitment to the approach. It requires the courage to entrust less-experienced individuals with a lot of responsibility, and acknowledgement that failure will happen as team members learn how to succeed.

In the end, bottom-up hiring is a choice that we've made and committed to - it is part of the way of the Helcim. We are builders - this not only applies to our products and processes but, most importantly, our people.

At Helcim, we believe in achieving great things - for the businesses we serve, and for every team member who has chosen to bet their career on this mission.

And in order to achieve great outcomes in a competitive, fast-moving, and high-stakes environment like ours, it means that we must take both a smarter and harder approach to the work that we do every day.

What "smarter" means at Helcim

Working smarter means doing work that matters - it's about delivering results that truly move the company forward.

It means solving the right problems, setting a high bar for quality and asking hard questions instead of hiding behind assumptions. It means not waiting for perfect clarity or permission to act, but instead getting up from our desk, talking to the right people, and getting unblocked.

Nuance is a professional skill that takes years to build.

And at the core of working smarter is something we call professional nuance - a skill that takes time and experience to build. Nuance helps you know when to push and when to compromise. It guides decisions about where to spend time, when to prioritize quality vs. speed, and when a project needs to pivot.

What "harder" means at Helcim

We do not count hours, but this is also not a 9-to-5 company. This commitment comes to life in what we call "the spirit of 50" - embracing the idea that building great things requires more than an average commitment.

Working harder means showing up with intensity, urgency, and a deep sense of responsibility to your team and to the mission. It means following through when things get tough. It means caring enough to stay engaged, to jump in when it counts, and to refuse to let something important slide.

It doesn't mean working all the time or chasing some heroic ideal of "hustle" - we do not glorify burnout at Helcim. Instead, we believe that great performance is sustainable performance, and we actively coach our teams to find healthy rhythms.

Embracing smarter, harder and the spirit of 50 is a cornerstone of our success and also the foundation for how we accelerate careers. We recognize this approach isn't for everyone, but we hold ourselves to this high standard because our mission to empower small businesses truly matters.

Helcim does not have an official career ladder system, and it will probably be a long time before we do. There are both pros and cons to this, but that is the reality that comes with joining a startup. On the pro side, everyone at the company gets to have a large impact on the outcome and has an ability to shape the road in front of them.

There are less "rules" about how one's career should evolve over time - you don't need to wait 4 years to become a Manager and 10 years to become a VP. Helcim makes its own rules and there are so many opportunities for our team members based on how they seize them.

Getting comfortable with constant change

Startups are not for everyone. Less structure isn't always ideal for some - there are cons. Fast growing organizations need to constantly adapt and change which means less structure and less clarity on the path ahead.

Those that have had tremendous success at Helcim have taken their development into their own hands, and as a result have been able to experience hyper-growth - more than what might be possible at other companies.

1:1 meetings are a crucial part of your career development, and one of the best ways to explore ways to grow your career. These meetings are a safe place for you to vocalize ideas that you have for your future. If you are not using your 1:1s with your manager (and their manager in skip-level 1:1s) to talk about career development, you're missing one of the most powerful tools available to you.

Status updates should almost always be handled in a different setting, not as part of your 1:1s. Remember, having 1:1s is a large part of your manager's job. If you've taken it upon yourself to lead your meetings and your manager is not willing to engage in these topics constructively, then escalate the concern.

We want you to take on challenges that seem daunting and encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone. Most importantly, we will support you through the failures and the mistakes. And they will happen. You will poorly handle a customer call. A marketing campaign will fail. You will deploy buggy code to production. It's all part of the journey.

Helcim is an organization that takes risks, like the way that we hire and develop talent through our bottom-up hiring process. It would be unrealistic for us to be focused on hiring junior talent, give them big responsibilities, and yet be unsupportive when they inevitably fail every now and then.

There are certain parts of our business where we are more risk averse than others. For things like our infrastructure, our security, and our core payment processing functions, we have little appetite for risk and so we put ample processes and protections in place to reduce those risks. But there are many other areas where risk is embraced.

So take leaps of faith and try things that seem daunting. When screw ups occur, be upfront and communicate those mistakes early to your fellow team members so that problems can be fixed quickly, and we can prevent those mistakes from becoming calamities.

How you respond to a mistake you've made will say so much more about you than the mistake itself.

Leadership and management are often used interchangeably, but they are two different concepts. A manager must be a leader, but a leader is not always a manager.

At Helcim, we believe that first and foremost a leader is someone that builds up the people around them and positively impacts more than their role and their immediate responsibilities. This is not something that requires direct reports nor a management title, but instead is something that should be aspired to by everyone.

Leaders are the north star of the people around them. They provide guidance and their actions serve as a constant reference point for our values. Every single team member at Helcim benefits from the great leaders all around them, and not just their managers. Being a bottom-up organization, we must all strive to become leaders that the next generation can look up to.

Every single person at Helcim needs to strive to become a leader. This doesn't mean that everyone needs to be a manager with direct reports, but we expect everyone to cultivate their leadership traits and the impact that they have on the people around them.

We believe that a manager's primary responsibility is to ensure their team's success - not just their happiness.

It starts with fostering a positive, fair, and supportive workplace as a foundational requirement in you being an effective manager and leader at Helcim. Ultimately we see the manager's role is to guide their team toward excellence, helping them reach their potential and contribute to the organization's broader goals.

We challenge a common pitfall where new managers can mistakenly see their role as shielding their team from hard work and difficult challenges. This is a leadership trap that often leads to burnout for the manager and deprives the team of opportunities to grow, learn, and prove their resilience.

A manager's job is to create a culture of continuous learning, where you give your teams the room to be challenged and develop new skills. We focus on creating opportunities for growth, setting high standards, and holding everyone accountable. Managers are here to make the organization win, and when the organization wins, so do the people.

Great managers are problem solvers and help bring clarity and direction in times of ambiguity. Building on top of a leadership foundation, a manager takes on the direct responsibility of a team and the ownership of their execution. They are enablers and empowerers, aiming to do everything they can to help their team succeed.

Finding reward in leading others

When starting a career, it is common for people to shy away from management roles. They can seem daunting, with many fearing that they lack the interpersonal skills to navigate the job. But if you've ever experienced a poor manager, the reason is likely because they were a poor leader.

No product, system or service lives in isolation of the great people that build and maintain it. For those that aim for greater ownership and responsibility, ultimately this will lead to managing the great people that make that system a reality.

This can be a daunting task, but management like all other skills can be learned. We're here to help you develop those skills and empower you to take on what may seem like daunting challenges.

It is common in companies to interpret the term "individual contributor" (IC) as a career path for those that don't aspire to be managers. At Helcim we understand that management is not for everyone and that there needs to be viable career options for those that want something else. However, this is what we look for in individual contributors as they advance:

Radius of impact - This refers to the sphere of people that are impacted by your work. Are you a lone individual working on a small feature, or are you building frameworks to enable others to work, build and create faster? Are you impacting the growth of a small team or an entire department?

Leverage - Leverage is the ability to achieve exponential benefit from your initiatives. High leverage activities are typically those that focus on coaching, training, building processes, building tools, and crafting a culture.

Regardless of how you want to build your career, you need to progress in one or both of the above to advance beyond a certain level. Both management and individual contributor streams require making the people around you more effective, but in slightly different ways.

Our organization needs both individual contributors and managers in order to thrive. We want to encourage both paths, while removing the fears and barriers typically associated with management.

Just like everything in life, your journey at Helcim is what you make of it. Every small step will contribute towards a bigger achievement, both in your individual work and the steps you take to develop your career. Through this book you will have seen opportunities for further learning, and we encourage you to be curious about those topics in your spare time.

Here are some ways you can engage and connect with the company:

Town halls - We have an all-hands-on-deck meeting every month. This gives us a chance to regroup all together, go over our financial statements, and discuss the most pressing items impacting our company and our future. We also have a Q&A section where all questions, no matter the topic, are answered honestly and publicly.

Captain's log - Helcim's internal newsletter, appears in your inbox every Thursday. Everyone can contribute to its content, from company news to social events.

Coffees, chat rooms and lunch rooms - We're privileged to work in a great office next to beautiful Prince's Island park. Take teammates out for coffee or lunch, or invite new people for walks and get to know them. We also have a ton of chat rooms, some company-wide, others specific to teams and products. Don't be afraid to raise your hand and lend your opinions, or simply say hello.

Passing the torch

While you may feel like a newbie now, sooner than you think you will be surrounded by fresh faces looking for guidance. We ask you to remember how welcome your team made you feel when you started, and for you to continue the tradition. Soon enough you will be seen as a leader and senior and will become part of the culture that is this company.

Lend a hand, and help the people around you discover the way of the Helcim.

Think Helcim is the organization you've been looking for? We're always looking for amazing people to help us build. Visit our career section and apply to join our team.