Our Mission: BCE

What is BCE?

“BCE” is an acronym that you may not have heard before, so what does it mean?

We first learned about BCE from Dan Springer, currently CEO of DocuSign where he was recently ranked the #3 CEO in the entire high tech industry to work for, so he must be on to something, right?

We met him during the acquisition of our prior company, Push IO. He had arrived at our offices to meet the team, learn about our work and plans, and share his vision for the future of our combined companies. As our team sat with him in the conference room, he captured our interest and imagination, and at one point began writing acronyms on the whiteboard and asking if anyone knew what they meant.

The first few were straightforward enough, terms like “ARR” (annual recurring revenue), “LTV” (lifetime value) and “ROI” (return on investment). Our team was savvy enough to know most of these immediately. But then he wrote “BCE” on the board and we were honestly stumped.

After a silent pause on our part, he explained “BCE” means Best Company Ever and it’s what we strive to be.

“BCE” means Best Company Ever and it’s what we strive to be

At its essence, BCE is a way of doing business such that everyone who comes in contact with your company should be able to leave that experience feeling like they’ve just interacted with the Best Company Ever. Certainly BCE incorporates the idea of “Core Values” as was well documented by Jim Collins' “Built to Last” (still one of the best business history books of all time).

But it’s not about just brainstorming a list of those Core Values (which is by no means a simple task to begin with). It’s a spirit and an attitude that we want our company to strive for, and that permeates our work day in and day out.  And while it may sound cliche to say so, it’s really more about the journey than the destination.

We will always encounter new and unknown situations that we have to navigate, and with BCE, hopefully we give our team a North Star to guide them to do the right thing in unfamiliar situations. It’s something that we can ask ourselves with each decision we make, “Is this decision consistent with being the Best Company Ever?”

And we try to ask it about every participant and stakeholder we encounter, “Is this BCE for our employees and their families? Is this BCE for our Customers?” It doesn’t stop there, either. It should also involve our vendors and suppliers, our landlords and neighbors, and for that matter probably even our competitors.

NAMI ML + BCE

And while it is no doubt going to be a never ending process that we can continuously improve upon, we do have some touchstones we’ve identified already that we believe we must keep central to our efforts to help us move closer to the goal of being BCE. Today, those are:

Happy Customers

‍
We must strive in everything we do to put the Customer first, and dedicate ourselves to how we can help them win at their goals, with alacrity.

Top Talent

‍
We must make sure we attract and nurture the best talent, both because it makes our company, products and processes better, but also because they are a joy to work with.

Engaged Investors

‍
As a company that is built with outside capital, we want to work with investors who understand our mission (including BCE) and will lean in with more than just money, but also the strategic assets they willingly bring to help us move forward.

A Commitment to End User Privacy

‍
Perhaps the most important thing we can do in today’s connected era is commit to protecting end user privacy. We are constantly innovating ways to accomplish our mission of helping our customers that respect the critical relationship they have with their end users, to make our tools work without requiring any end user identity, to give our customers something they can be proud to tell their end users about.

‍

* * *

‍

These are just the first steps we’re taking on the path to becoming the Best Company Ever.

We’d love to get your feedback as to how we are doing to meet these commitments, and crucially, how we can improve.

Thank you for reading!

‍