# Duvo Culture

This is the bar for everyone at Duvo. If you manage someone, also read the [Manager Playbook](/managers).

We hire senior people into an early-stage company that handles critical customer work.

Duvo builds AI agents that do the operational work a customer's team would otherwise do. Supply chain, finance, logistics. In their systems. On real exceptions. Through the last mile. If a person had to finish it, we didn't.

Operators and builders are the same team.

## The bar

Who we hire. Who we keep. Good and bad, so the line is visible.

### 1. Builds from zero

**Good.** Has personally created products, systems, processes, or commercial motions without relying on a mature playbook, brand, or support structure.

**Bad.** Results only exist inside a scaled organisation where the processes, team, and resources were already in place.

### 2. Shows high agency and ownership

**Good.** Acts without waiting for perfect instructions, stays close to the work, and owns outcomes through problems and iteration.

**Bad.** Coordinates, advises, or delegates by default, and blames another team, the customer, or missing processes when results fall short.

### 3. Obsesses over customers and measurable outcomes

**Good.** Connects their work to a real customer or business result and can explain the evidence clearly.

**Bad.** Talks mainly about activities, outputs, prestige, or internal processes without a clear outcome.

### 4. Is pro-AI and AI-native

**Good.** Actively uses AI to improve the speed and quality of their work, experiments with new tools, and can show specific examples.

**Bad.** Is dismissive or defensive about AI, or their experience is limited to generic ChatGPT or autocomplete.

### 5. Chooses Duvo deliberately

**Good.** Is at Duvo because of the work, the stage, and the ownership. A better title or a bigger offer somewhere else would not change that.

**Bad.** Is at Duvo because of a title, a package, or a vague interest. A better offer somewhere else would change that.

## How we show up

The bar is who belongs. The values are how we work once we're here.

1. **Own it.** The bar isn't "I flagged it." It's "I moved it forward." Don't wait for the problem to be assigned. Ambiguity is a reason to move. An 80% fix today beats a perfect one next week.

2. **Obsess over the customer.** Know their actual day better than the process doc. Tell them what's not worth fixing. Connect what you shipped to a specific person's work getting easier.

3. **Grow and compound.** You will be wrong. What's not acceptable is staying wrong. Seek feedback and use it. When you solve something, leave it where someone you have never met can find it.

4. **Prove, don't argue.** Strong opinions, held loosely. Measure before you propose. Once decided, commit. Kill your own idea when the evidence says so.

5. **Say it straight, now.** Share the bad news when you have it. No one is too senior to hear hard truths, no one is too junior to share them. Better wrong out loud than right too late.

Values without the work isn't excellence. Work without the values is a short-term win.

## Getting the job done

We score the values. We also score the work, on these five:

1. **Customer outcomes.** Advance the customer result, not just your function's output.
2. **Focus and judgment.** Choose the few priorities and trade-offs that make the outcome win.
3. **Dependable delivery.** Reliable, verified, visible, and complete through the last mile.
4. **Role craft.** Apply the craft of the role at the standard the work requires.
5. **Team multiplier.** Raise the output and standards of the people around you.

## How we work

Work in public, in English. Slack is the default. Write a proposal with a point of view, not a discussion thread that goes nowhere. Private is for personnel and for things that would harm someone if they were public.

Outcomes over activity. Work nobody knows about doesn't count. Done means the last mile: verified, visible, handed off, and real on the customer side. Build simple. Ship the 80/20. Root every piece of work in why it helps a customer.

We use AI on our own work, and we keep reinventing how. Walk the walk. If a way of working stops working, kill it. When you find a better way, share it.

If you feel friction, say it loudly. Unblocking people comes first.

With customers we are consultants, not order-takers. If someone asks us to automate something broken, show them a better way. Answer customers within a day, even if the answer is "I'm looking, I'll update you Thursday." Silence is the one thing you can't undo.

Meetings have a pre-read and an agenda. Keep them short. Leave if you're not useful.

PTO is inform, not request. Log it in Humaans, tell the team, and hand the work off before you go. When you're off, be off.

If this page is wrong, say so. We would rather fix it than let folklore win.