Inside Xflow: The principles that shape how we work

At Xflow, we don’t just talk about culture, we commit to it in how we work, lead, and build. As a company building critical financial infrastructure, how we work is just as important as what we’re building. Our principles help us make decisions, collaborate better, and build a company that attracts people who care deeply about doing their best work.

These are the principles that ground us, push us, and define who we are.

At Xflow, we’re clear about who our customers are, and that is Xflow’s user. We’re obsessed about making our users insanely successful and using user priorities to make tradeoffs. We work hard to keep our users' trust and constantly try to stay close to them.

We over-index for transparency - we intentionally avoid information silos and default to open-ness. By the standard of the rest of the working world, we may be perceived as being “over trusting” and we are ok with that. There’s a delicate balance between rigor and trust. We will push the collective quality of thought and work to new limits. However, no matter how strong the disagreement, we believe firmly in the importance of trusting each other’s intentions.

Speed matters. Perfection is an illusion. However, we are building infrastructure and so cannot afford to ship what is not reliable, resilient or scalable. We have to learn to balance moving with urgency with the responsibility of building systems that others will depend on. 

When making decisions, think & contemplate Type 1 decisions (including decisions where potential outcomes can cause existential issues for Xflow). For Type 2, execute fast. A by-product of this is that we will make mistakes. At Xflow, we will celebrate mistakes by shining a light on them, learning from them and not repeating them.

People often worry when they join a company or any nascently successful startup whether all the large problems have been solved? Are there still important decisions left to be made and things to be built?

The good news: it’s not too late and in the case of Xflow, it probably never will be. The scope of what we are looking to do is so large that most of the important problems will take decades to solve. 

The bad news: our success is far from being assured. Sure, we’ve raised some capital and hired a bunch of smart individuals, but we have such a long way to go. We consider lots of things to be “broken” today — and the more successful we are, the faster things will come to break in the future. (If you’ve ever played Tetris, you know exactly what we mean as the levels and difficulty increase).

We believe in the power of ELI5 questions and reasoning from first principles. We believe that part of our secret sauce to getting it right is balancing this primitive with moving with urgency. Before and during execution, we constantly ensure that we question existing assumptions (most of them in our experience are entirely superfluous and deserve to be questioned) and proof-test these assumptions by talking with our partners and users. At the end of it all, if we can’t explain what we’ve learnt to a 5-year old who constantly asks why, we will go back and dig deeper to find those answers.

At all times, we act like owners - prioritize the long term over the short term and prioritize being exceptional over being good enough. Whether it is building the company, hiring or building products, we always insist on the highest standards. While we are not chasing perfection, we should strive to put out stuff that constantly “wows” our users and everyone else in the ecosystem. We should set the benchmark for things that matter to us - be it API design, reliability, user experience and more. When constrained, we shall not look to deliver a good enough product that meets several users’ needs but an exceptional product that wows a smaller set of users. When constrained by capacity, we will similarly focus on delivering exceptionally well on a smaller set of things than lowering our bar to hire more people. 

At Xflow, we believe in radical candor regardless of hierarchy. You are in fact doing Xflow and yourself a disservice if you don’t speak up when you think there is something wrong with what the company or team is doing. You are not here to make your manager happy. You are here to work towards Xflow and consequently our users' success. Speak up, provide feedback while remaining respectful. You will be heard.

We balance this above principle by acknowledging that there will be moments of contention where the conflict is due to opposing viewpoints. Regardless of how we feel as individuals at the time, remember that these situations are normal where we have well intentioned individuals standing by their thoughts. However, once a decision has been made, we expect that those who disagree will commit in good faith. Here’s a story on how Jeff Bezos modeled this primitive.

We believe that thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We’re at Xflow to change the world for the better. Our goals by definition and inclination are BIG and AUDACIOUS. They may sometimes be scary and may not even be achievable in the short term - and that’s ok! We pride ourselves in setting these goals for ourselves and constantly chipping away to make progress.

At Xflow, we don’t just talk about culture, we commit to it in how we work, lead, and build.

As a company redefining critical financial infrastructure, how we work is just as important as what we’re building. Our values serve as a shared compass that guides decisions, fosters deep collaboration, and helps us attract people who care about doing their best work together.

If this sounds like the kind of place where you’d thrive, we’re always looking for people who want to build with heart, ambition, and integrity. Check out our careers page and get in touch.