An Open Letter to our Team
This is a letter written by Personal AI (personal.ai) CTO Sharon Zhang and sent to the personal.ai team internally. We are making it an open (public) letter in the hope her words bring smiles and perhaps optimism for 2021 to others, just as it did the personal.ai team. Original letter follows.
2020 has been a dramatic year. For myself, the most unexpected surprise has been how close I got to a group of humans — intellectually and emotionally, without meeting all of you in person.
The epitome of that manifested at our Virtual Holiday Party (shoutout to Kelly, our People extraordinaire). We had a worldwide presence from every individual in the company. As we were unwrapping our gifts handpicked by our personal Secret Santa, the thought that we all came together — whether traveling home to Florida, finishing finals in Irvine, chilling in Cape Elizabeth, sitting outside in Australia, or just waking up in India — to spend two hours in each other’s company, made me reflect on what we foster together during this year of virtual-ness — a diverse team of individuals who shape and share the same values.
Reflecting back on this year and what allowed our team to achieve and to create, what makes me excited about the capacity to make impact and to build the future, here is what I learned from all of you:
Capacity to Learn
The most prominent characteristic shared by our team is the desire and capacity to learn and do. I remember the time when we were at the inception of creating our new UX, Sudhir (FE Lead) who just joined the team (expert in Angular.js) picked up Vue.js and created our brand new WebApp in just two weeks. I remember the time when Kristie (Design, Co-founder) picked up Webflow and gave life to our website in just a few days. I remember the time when Aidan and Alan (CS from Berkeley) made their production code contributions in the first weekend — automating logging and end-to-end deployment. The capacity and desire to learn new skills, the ability to always make possible as individuals give us superpowers as a team. As each of us is constantly expanding the boundaries of our knowledge, our potential to do more is greater than ever.
Collaborative Problem Solving
Someone asked me once, “Of all the start-ups (you’ve been part of), what stands out about personal.ai?” One of my answers was: “Strong opinions, weakly held.” Each person on our team brings their own diverse set of expertise and strong opinions, and at the same time is open and receptive to changing them when alternatives are presented. I remember day-long working sessions with the S5 (you know who you are) where technical problems are proposed, solutions are offered, questions are asked and assumptions are challenged, and the ensuing discussions back and forth considering every option. I remember our branding exercises, our commercial ideations, our content series, how much heart and thought each of us put in to create something beautiful. We always walked away with the best of all worlds, the cumulation of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that are put together collaboratively.
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Committed to Each Other
We are committed to not only our grand vision, but most importantly, to each other. This permeates how we interact with each other — respectfully and supportive. I remember the many nights/mornings where the circadian rhythms are ignored to pull together demos and product releases, where all of us organically choose to stay and support by being in the same VO aka. Virtual Office (as of 12/30, VO has been Slacked 1328 times, ~7.5 times per working day). I remember the time when we were evaluating Asana vs Airtable, Kristie and I loved Asana but didn’t want to make it harder for Will (Revenue)/Lakshmi (Customer) who loved Airtable, only to be surprised when they presented Asana as their ultimate choice to make lives easier for us (The Gift of the Magi moment). It is these moments that touch me deeply about how connected we are as a group of humans and how much we truly cared about each other.
Archimedes once said: “Give me a lever and I’ll move the world”. We are building a company that will move the world forward and that world moving force is All of You.
Cheers to 2021,
Let’s go create the future,
(Only full-timers are mentioned to protect confidentiality of others, y’all know who you are and how much I appreciate you.)
Yours truly,
Sharon Zhang
P.S.: Remember the Virtual Holiday Party where we first met Santa Suman …
