AI is rewriting the rules of business faster than most of us can keep up. Every industry table is getting flipped, every assumption challenged. In this environment, standing still isn't just risky—it's a fast track to irrelevance.
At Rebrandly, we've watched this transformation accelerate over the past year. Our customers are changing how they work, our market is evolving at breakneck speed, and what got us to this point won't get us where we need to go next. After a decade of successful growth, we faced a choice: evolve or get left behind.
That's when we took a hard look at our company values. What we found was... well, let's just say they'd become vanilla. Growth mindset, customer-first, transparency—fine principles, but generic enough that any SaaS company could claim them. We needed something authentically ours and bold enough to guide us through what comes next.
How we rebuilt our values from the ground up
When our executive team gathered in Dublin for our strategy retreat, we knew we were at an inflection point. Rebrandly had evolved from a founder-led startup into a professionally-led growth company with a new leadership team, and we needed values that matched our ambitions.
The process was intentional. We surveyed each other on the brightest examples of our desired future culture and identified specific behaviors we wanted to change. HR and marketing co-owned the work because these values serve as both decision-making guides and public statements about who we are.
Traditional change management relies on creating urgency through a "burning platform"—a concept first introduced in Daryl Conner's Managing at the Speed of Change—essentially scaring people into action by highlighting what's wrong or at risk. We chose a different approach entirely.
Instead of focusing on what we're running from, we decided to focus on what we're running toward. This led us to embrace "burning ambition" as both a concept and our lead value. We're not changing because we're in under pressure—we're changing because we have tremendous opportunities ahead of us, and we want to be the kind of company that seizes them.
The question driving every conversation: what worked before, and what needs to evolve?
The five values that will define our future
Out of those Dublin conversations came five values that work as practical decision-making tools, not just inspirational statements.
Burning ambition: We dream beyond the status quo
This sits at the top intentionally. We’re not simply settling for the way we’ve always done things; instead we’re setting big goals, pushing boundaries, and seizing opportunities. Our limits exist only in our imagination.
This value also reflects the type of talent we hope to attract to Rebrandly. When someone joins our team, we want them to see it as a career-defining moment and opportunity.
Know your customer: Beyond love, into understanding
Every SaaS company talks about being customer-first. We needed something more actionable. Knowing your customer requires both rigorous data analysis and genuine human connection. We read the metrics and pick up the phone for real conversations.
When you truly know your customers, you understand not just what they're asking for, but what they actually need. That insight becomes the foundation for everything else we build.
Builder mindset: No work is beneath us
No task is beneath us, and when we see something that needs doing, we take action. We don't just strategize about a new product idea—we build an MVP to test our assumptions. We don't theorize about user experience—we prototype and iterate.
This mindset powers growth and develops leaders. When you take ownership and think beyond your immediate scope, you're expanding both the company's capabilities and your own.
Transparency: The only way to run a remote company
For a distributed team across time zones, transparency isn't just a nice-to-have—it's an operational necessity. Despite our commitment to openness, 79% of our Slack conversations still happen privately. We have work to do.
We want the default to be sharing early and often, allowing people to share their messy process when needed, not just a polished result.
Courageous collaboration: Making bold moves feel safe
This started with the concept of psychological safety, but I wanted something even bolder. We don't just want people to feel safe—we want them emboldened to take risks, share audacious ideas, and push boundaries together.
Courageous collaboration means normalizing feedback as a tool for growth, not a threat. When someone proposes something ambitious, the team has their back—bold moves backed by team support, not brilliant ideas dying in isolation.
What this means for Rebrandly's future
The biggest shift isn't just what our values are—it's how we use them. We're moving away from top-down directives toward values-based leadership, where we establish guiding principles and trust our team to make wise decisions.
This approach becomes critical as AI blurs traditional functional lines. When engineers are doing design work and product people are prototyping, shared values become the common language that keeps everyone aligned. It's how we stay small and flat while scaling our impact.
Here are the changes I anticipate as we move forward:
Intelligent growth
These values are our blueprint for scaling thoughtfully. We're choosing to grow in step with our business success, staying lean and connected even as we reach ambitious targets. Even at $100 million ARR, I envision us as a company of 150 people, not 1,500.
We're optimizing for efficiency, innovation, and the kind of close collaboration that becomes impossible in traditional corporate hierarchies.
Better hiring, stronger culture
Values-based hiring changes everything. These aren't just inspirational words on our website; they're practical filters that help us identify people who will thrive here.
We've learned the hard way that hiring for competence alone isn't enough. The cost of cultural misalignment is too high. These values help us get more selective upfront, taking time to find people who don't just fit the role, but fit our vision of what Rebrandly can become.
Leading change, not following it
While larger companies struggle with the pace of transformation, we're positioned to move quickly and turn ambitious ideas into reality. Change is our competitive advantage.
Burning Ambition sets our direction, Know Your Customer grounds it in reality, Builder Mindset executes it, Transparency keeps everyone aligned, and Courageous Collaboration makes it sustainable. Each value reinforces the others.
We're not just changing our values—we're building the foundation for what comes next.
