2019 is proving to be an exciting year for Company
At the beginning of the year we closed our £1.4M seed round - a testament to the increasing importance of online businesses empowering their customers through transparency and control of data.
Now, almost half way through the year, we want to share with you a few updates and accomplishments.
1. New funding and new friends
We now have some great investors onboard, including Connect Ventures, SAATCHiNVEST, and Samos. These three funds now join our first investor, Entrepreneur First, which is where the journey began one year ago.
It’s humbling to have such great investors that believe in our vision and trust that we’re the right team to make it become a reality.
2. What do you think of these colours?
We felt our old brand didn’t represent the monumental mission we’re undertaking. It also had too many similarities with Google’s gmail - which certainly isn’t a company or business model we’re trying to replicate…
The old Company logo
To signify the next stage of Company, a fresh look was in order. After months of pondering, exploring and testing (alongside the brilliant Together), the new Company emerged:
The new Company logo
We wanted the brand to be fresh, different, clean, light, and not blue. It stands for something which is changing. And it allows “privacy” to finally transcend compliance into the world of transparency and control of data. Going from boring, costly and burdensome to refreshing, natural and contemporary.
Check out a new website to see it all in action.
3. The founding team
It took time. Along the way we turned down some incredible people and some incredible people turned us down. But right now we could not be more proud of the team we’ve assembled.
It’s extremely humbling to spend the majority of your time around such terrific people, all motivated by a single mission, and who push each other every single day.
We have fun together; you’re welcome to join :)
One of the best things about Company is that data ethics runs through the veins of our business, not just the product we are building. We are revolutionising how designers design products, how devs build them, how marketing teams market them, how product managers manage them, and how customer service teams service them.
If you’re interested in seeing what that’s like, feel free to come say hello at our new HQ at 82 Rivington Street in Shoreditch, London 👋
4. Happy, healthy and motivated
We recently decided to introduce some new perks at Company in an effort to make it the best place in the world to work!
✈️ We encourage employees to take at least one whole week off each quarter by giving them £250 to spend on some form of trip.
📘 Everyone gets £400 each year to spend on something which helps them learn such as online courses.
🍏 Being healthy is important, so everyone has private medical insurance as well as healthy food in the office at all times.
😊 We proactively encourage flexible working. We’re not at a stage to offer full-time remote, but people should work when and where they are most effective. We trust each other.
5. Content content content
Data ethics is a subject with extraordinarily interesting depths to it. But most of the content you can find is like “how to comply with GDPR.” Pretty boring and it’s obvious that no one is reading this stuff anyway.
There just aren’t enough people discovering and deliberating the more interesting questions like “what’s the world going to be like when I can share my grocery shopping data with my doctor at the click of a button? And what do we need to do to reach that state?”
We started the Company blog to ignite conversations like these. It’s a place where we at Company and others talk about the hard questions surrounding data ethics and the new digital world we’re heading into.
We’re always welcoming guest writers, so get in touch if you have something interesting to share with the world! For notifications on new articles and other interesting stories, follow us on twitter.
So, what’s next?
More product! Keep your eyes peeled… there’s some exciting stuff to come that’ll make it easier than ever for online companies to empower their users through transparency and control of data.
Richard Vibert & Ben van Enckevort
Cofounders