Every company has a culture, either by design or default. From our inception in 2016, we wanted to create a very distinctive organization with a clear focus on the “what we are doing” in tandem with “how we do it.” At HotSpot we are really pushing the envelope. The trifecta of our brilliant and diverse talent, our groundbreaking use of advanced machine learning technology and our higher order mission to drug the undruggable imbues our culture with a unique mix of innovative spirit and fearlessness that infects everything we do. As we’ve continued to grow and mature as a company, we decided that the timing was right to recognize our distinctive culture by revisiting and properly defining our core values.
To do this, we established a small, cross-functional group who spoke with people throughout the company, learning about what makes all of us tick and trying to identify what the Harvard Business Review defines as: “the essential and enduring tenets of an organization.” We shared our collective insights and quickly concluded that we did not fit the traditional mold of over-used corporate tropes like authenticity, teamwork, integrity and transparency. Sure, those things are important to all of us, but they don’t define the exceptional something that makes HotSpot so special.
Ultimately, our North Star became defining the specific behaviors and actions that mirror the confidence we all have in our incredible, disruptive technology and its ability to hopefully transform drug discovery. We set out to develop core values that would elevate the company, resonate with current and future employees, create an environment of resilience and inspire us more than any motivational corporate poster on a wall could ever do.
Ultimately, we landed on a typology that very much underscores our thinking about the future of work, the accelerated pace of change occurring in healthcare and the increasing complexity of our operations. The following represents a set of core values that best capture what it means to be a part of HotSpot and what we think our mark on the future will look like:
Courageous adventurers
We see what can be
We are on a cutting-edge adventure to break down barriers between what is, and what can be, in our relentless pursuit to drug the undruggable.
We need rebellious innovation to reject the status quo, try new ideas and have the confidence to successfully challenge conventional thinking.
Leave your mark
We take on big problems with broad impact
We are galvanized by the prospect of making a lasting contribution to society to help people that we might never meet.
By tackling big problems that matter, we want to fundamentally change the way researchers think about discovering and developing new medicines.
Keep it human
We care about each other
Innovation occurs best when team members share deep levels of trust, check egos at the door and assume the best about each other.
Make it real
We do what we say we are going to do
We are pragmatic dreamers, committed to testing new theories and pushing scientific boundaries with the knowledge that none of this matters unless we can consistently deliver on our promises.
We now have a small set of core values that everyone in the company is getting to know and will become embedded into our performance reviews and recruiting. We worked diligently to ensure our values are thoroughly understood, deeply felt and in the decades to come, will stand the test of time.
