Until now, most of our blog posts have focused on Infinit, as a product, as a technology – as a company. While these aspects are at the core of our organization’s subsistence, they are still only a reflection of the underlying human elements that bring them into being and guide their evolution. Rarely does a startup offer insight into its culture and the people behind their product’s experience. Today, we’d like to open the door and offer you a peek into our world – not our backgrounds and résumés, but our dreams, our shared values and our common inspiration.
While we don’t place a heavy emphasis on where we’re based geographically, it does in fact play a role in our approach to culture and value systems. Paris is at the heart of a country that has experienced a long history of monarchy, social strife, revolution, global hegemony and decline in the era of globalization. This saga has resulted in an amazingly diverse population complemented by a socioeconomic culture oriented towards the improvement of the social good. I should note here that the underlying importance of this progress does not lay in its political mechanisms, but rather the worldview that the ideology represents – socioeconomic equality for the masses and profitable opportunities for those that seek them.
Infinit’s culture is thus built upon 4 main pillars.
The spark that hurdled Infinit from idea to endeavor was kindled in scientific exploration at the University of Cambridge. It was formally laid out in a doctoral thesis entitled, Towards a Worldwide Storage Infrastructure, describing the foundations of our technology, which we refer to as a decentralized file system. Naturally, the engineers that first joined Infinit were focused heavily on research and development, growing their beards and listening to metal music, the 3 necessary characteristics that allow for great breadth and flexibility in software. These first hires placed a huge emphasis on logic and reason, and have set the foundations for a scientific approach at Infinit.
One should never evaluate an individual solely based on his or her age or the length of his or her hair. The youngest person at Infinit is 22 years old, and the oldest, 29. We were born in the 1980s, came of age in the 1990s and truly began experiencing the world as adults, in the last decade or so. Walking the line between Generation Y and Digital Native offers us a distinctive perspective on the evolution of the human experience with technology. We’re sensitive to design in a way our parents were never able to grasp. The distinction between a gratifying experience like that of Spotify and a satisfactory one like that of Grooveshark makes or breaks a product for us. In a world with too many options, the experience counts more than the features and functionalities. While we are not unique in having lived through this period of technological revolution, we do make a meaningful effort to recognize the importance of the evolving use of technology and apply it to our own vision through the principles of simplicity, design and fun, touted by so many successful tech companies. We do, however, attempt to push a step further by developing the experience as one that inspires feeling and emotion.
Each day, without skipping a beat, two or more of our team members engage in intellectual debates, addressing topics as diverse as the redistribution of wealth and Bitcoin to laws governing GMOs or the semantics of the English and French vocabularies. In most cases, our overarching views on these topics are actually quite similar, which allows us to debate in good faith and maintain positive attitudes. However, the logic we use to arrive at similar conclusions offers more than enough fodder to ignite immersive sub-debates that often lead to new and/or ridiculous spin off conversations such as a subjective comparison of duck confit and duck magret. Surprisingly, the only point of non-contention is the unanimous regard of Roquefort as the best cheese. Our discussions are varied and can be deep, playful or pointed, not as the result of pedigrees in debate and philosophy from Harvard or Cambridge, but because we’ve asked why and how enough to reasonably understand our world, its status quo and the ironies of human nature.
Although the tone of this post may present us as serious semi-hipsters and wannabe philosophers, fun is far from a foreign concept to us. Our founders grew up in a little known region of France called Deux-Sèvres. In those parts, the fun culture goes by the name of La Bombarde. La Bombarde is unique in so many ways, but what it entails rings true for even the American and South African on our team. It’s part of a culture familiar to almost anyone that grew up in a rural or semi-rural area (if you’re Parisian, you may have a hard time completely grasping the concept). La Bombarde signifies a gathering of close friends and friends of friends, where copious amounts of homemade alcohol and beer are served over the course of an afternoon and night. Games such as the infamous palet are played relentlessly, with nearly every person present vying to be champion. While people socialize, a few motivated hosts usually prepare a feast. In urban areas such as Paris, putting together such grandiose events can be difficult, but we’ve been fortunate enough to establish a sort of Infinit camp less than 500 meters into the Parisian suburbs, aka la banlieue. Because 5 of us live across the street from each other, each month, we host a Bombarde or two, and each time, something surprising and often absurd takes place. La Bombarde has proven to be one of the most successful mechanisms for promoting cohesion at Infinit and fortifying a bond between us all.
In the end, we’re just normal people. We place great value on knowledge and intelligence. Our goal is to build products that people want to use and experiences that inspire others. We recognize the potential of our technology, and we have a broad vision of how it can have a lasting and positive impact on the world. We hope that you enjoyed this brief insight into our culture. In the future, we’ll post on more themes that make Infinit the company it is today.
