About Guru:
While we’re a long way from the manual inconveniences of flipping through a rolodex or fumbling to send a fax, the flood of digital workplace productivity platforms that swooped in to save us have now posed their own minor problems. Convenience has turned into clutter.
Or, more simply put: we can’t find anything anymore.
Guru founders and seasoned veteran entrepreneurs Rick Nucci and Mitchell Stewart recognized these modern pain points in knowledge management. Departments were functioning in silos, information was buried in servers and many individuals were routinely asked to answer the same questions by their peers over and over again.
With the proliferation of collaboration tools and knowledge silos, employees are inundated with information. Add on the hybrid work dynamics, and the amount of information overload is at an all time high. Employees can’t find anything, are overwhelmed by how much “stuff” they need to keep track of, and are burning out.
Rather than simply make digital information easier for you to find, Guru turned the process upside down and decided to have that information find you - just what you need, just when you need it.
Today, Guru works with customers like Zoom, Shopify, Slack and others to tap into their company’s collective knowledge and reduce information overload for their employees. With Guru, the more you use it, the better it gets to know your people and the information they need, reducing wasted time looking for documents, answering customer questions and communicating with peers.
Much like its product, Guru’s workspace was also built with intention. Stepping into the Guru office, you immediately feel at home. The urban industrial workspace is peppered with scenes of colorful living room spaces, complete with leash-free pups spreading kisses as they settle on a nearby rug. Also noticeable across the space is the calm, quiet buzz of productivity. Emphasis on the word calm.
Having been through more than one startup rodeo, Nucci and Stewart decided to learn from their experiences and create a company with a very deliberate approach of putting its customers and team members first.
In action, that meant unplugging the pressure cooker boiling under many startups to build a company where quality and thoughtfulness came before speed. Good ideas trumped the way things had always been done. Humbly taking feedback erased ego.
Our Core Values
When Guru was founded, we had a vision of how we wanted to solve the knowledge management problem. However, it was early customer development that really shaped Guru to be the product it is today - and those lessons have really influenced the way we not only continue to build products, but also how we build culture. Some of the other values we’ve built this company around are:
When we share what we know and lift others as we rise, we build a culture of knowledge that makes us all a little bit better.
- Don't Take Yourself too Seriously
Ask questions and seek to understand the world and the people around you. Lead with empathy and listen. Being open to new ideas that move us forward is more important than getting your way.
Building great things takes endurance— it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Act with urgency (a marathon is still a race, after all). Charting a course is key to solving problems thoughtfully, but stay flexible and ready to find a new route to the finish line. Be resilient, and rest when you need to.
Every person here has a hand in making Guru great: a place where people want to work and a best-in-class product that people love to use. Every interaction with our brand should create ambassadors. We spend our energy nurturing our users to turn them into customers and finally into our biggest advocates.
- Give and Receive Graciously
A cycle of giving starts with one person. Care for yourself so you can show up for others. Build trust through giving thoughtful, candid, and kind feedback. Be an open and curious recipient of feedback and get comfortable with the learning process. Dedicate your time and energy to improving the world around you.
These values are critical to everything we do at Guru. So much so, that we’ve built interview questions around these values to try and suss them out of potential candidates. We also reinforce them by highlighting our employees who demonstrate these each month at our company town halls.
From day one, it’s been critical to us that these aren’t just words hung up on the wall. They are designed to be actionable, and we are always looking to reinforce them wherever we can.
Guru
