Here Not There Labs
Introduce us to your team
Led by Ben Rubin and Brian Meek, we are a small group of world-class engineers and product people that believe in framework-driven value creation through open and direct communication. We are thoughtful, self-aware, and not afraid to help each other to become better. As a remote-first team, we value an environment where respect, trust, and transparency allow each of us to stay present and focused on our work. We are remotely distributed, but work and meet during North American time-zone hours.
What is the product you’re building?
Here Not There is building a fully decentralized chat protocol and client for online communities, backed by the world’s leading investors in web3.
What is your team mission?
Our mission is to help communities reclaim their town square and bring ownership back to the people. We believe the value in platforms should accrue to the people who participate rather than a big org.
What does your workplace look like?
Each team member gets a stipend to set up their home office (or join a co-working space if they prefer). Because we are a distributed team, we come together twice a year to meet, hang out and work together at locations around the world. The last retreat we had was in Lisbon, Portugal and the one before in Sedona, Arizona. We also encourage quarterly in-person trips for smaller teams like engineering or product to work in person.
How does your team manage meetings?
We believe that people need heads down time to do great work and don't fill up people's time with unnecessary meetings. We have a daily standup for the whole team and outside of that we leave it up to you to decide when you need to meet and with who. We strive to only have meetings if there is a goal and an agenda.
How does your team work with product and engineering?
Design works very closely with engineering and it's a back and forth relationship where we openly discuss problems and solutions.
Plus we have a really amazing PM, Ginny, who helps keep our product and dev processes extremely organized.
Share an interesting side project from a team member
We've worked on some fun side projects as a team. We built ChatWallette, which lets you chat with people who hold the same NFTs as you.
Another project led by two of our team members, Pat and Theo, was LUPI. The idea was the person who guesses the LUPI, the lowest unique positive integer, wins the jackpot.
What design tools do you use day to day?
We ❤️ Figma and Origami
How do we contact you?
You can tweet us at @hntlabs or email us at hello@hntlabs.com.