Curiosity is the most valuable resource humanity has, and it is unlimited.
All we have to do is learn how to wake it up in the mind of a student…and
they will go on to change the world.
Curiosity is what drove us to wonder how our bodies and minds work; to
question our own existence. It's what drove us to wonder how much faster
we could move, how much farther we could travel, how we could cure
diseases, improve lives, create masterpieces, read, write, and discover.
It's what pushed us to wonder what was on the other side of the vast
ocean, beyond the edge of our shore. It is what still drives us today to
wonder what's out there in space, beyond the edge of the earth.
Curiosity pushes us to push limits. It pushes us to chase the impossible. To
map the universe.
We believe the greatest quality of humanity is our desire to know what we
cannot know. To see what we cannot see. To understand what is
incomprehensible.
Curiosity is the most pure human motivation because it seeks not to
conquer, nor to own, nor to consume.
It seeks only to understand.
Our Manifesto

Table of Contents
1. Introduction to intentional culture
a. Why focus on culture?
b. The elements of Packback’s culture
2. The Packback Company Purpose
3. Packback Values
4. Team Norms
Table of Contents

Introduction
Culture happens.
Whether you plan for it or not, a culture is defined by the actions, attitudes, and behaviors of a team.

Introduction
When Purpose and Values are explicit
and created by the entire team,
it forms an intentional culture.
When values are explicit, it empowers individual team
members to make autonomous decisions because they
know that their decision is aligned with the values.
But when values are not explicit, they can, by default,
become a reflection of the founders and early members
of the team, shortcomings and all. Implicit values lead
to ambiguity around what it means to be successful in
an organization, leading people to feel like they are
“walking on eggshells” with each action they take.
When the company’s purpose is explicit, it allows the team
to proactively determine the ways that the team can drive
the most impact around that purpose.
But when when a company’s purpose is not explicit, it can
default to a focus on short-term revenue gains as the end
goal. However, a focus on revenue alone can only be short-
term, at best, as to create revenue, a company must have a
goal of creating a consistent kind of value for their growing
customer base; a lack of purpose leads to a lack of focus.

Introduction
We continue to evolve our cultural norms as we learn more about ourselves, our customers, and
our industry. Our values have evolved in their wording over time; our team has evolved
dramatically in what we consider it takes to exemplify our values.
But this constant growth is a hallmark of our cultural value; “We never stop moving forward”.
Packback strives to be a company
dedicated to continuous learning,
both in our product and in our culture.

Introduction
Culture at Packback is comprised of 3 parts:
Purpose
Why we exist
Values
The mindsets we care about that we believe
will make us successful in our purpose
Team Norms, Tools, and Expectations
The values, made tangible & trackable

The Packback Purpose
Our purpose provides a unifying “North
Star” of the impact we strive to bring to
the world, directionally guiding all of
Packback’s decisions.
Packback Purpose

Packback exists to awaken and fuel the
lifelong curiosity in every student.
Packback Purpose

The Packback Values
The Packback Values are:
1) The mindsets that guide our behaviors and decision-making.
2) A rubric for screening hires and retaining great team members whose
align with what's expected from every Packback team member.
3) A common benchmark with which to evaluate and reflect on the health
of our culture.
Packback Values

#1: We are fearlessly curious.
We constantly seek to deepen our understanding of our disciplines and of the world,
and relish opportunities to discover and experience something new. Our curiosity is
focused towards how we can build a company that best supports curiosity and
lifelong learning in students…and as we explore that question, we ask how our own
expertise in engineering, sales, recruiting, etc. can be applied to further that purpose.
It could be tempting, as a part of a busy team, to want to rush to find an easy answer to
complex questions. But we pride ourselves on our desire to fully understand
important problems in our company and our industry at their root causes, not just
their symptoms.
We fearlessly ask the questions of ourselves, our team, and our business that are the
most uncomfortable, including, “What can we learn from this failure?”; “Do we really
understand why this success occurred?”; and “Is there a better way?”
Packback Values

Packback Values
#2: We are radically kind.
Often, the hardest thing to do is also the kindest, and we consistently choose
kindness over “niceness”. Empathy, conscious communication, and an eye towards
the “bigger picture” of what we want to achieve helps us fight off our own egos and
the fear of confrontation that stand in the way of accomplishing great things.
We are radically kind to our customers. We optimize towards truly supporting the
best outcomes for our customers, through kindness over niceness, because it is
our responsibility to make sure that students are getting real value out of Packback.
We are radically kind to our teammates. That means that we are thoughtful about
how we communicate to ensure that we are optimizing towards the outcome we
want to achieve, but we never hold back on sharing feedback that could help
someone. We assume the best of one another, and so we address issues early.
And we are radically kind to ourselves. We choose to look at our own opportunities
to improve with excitement, not fear or resentment.

Packback Values
#3: We do what we say we will do.
Stories that look like “overnight successes” are actually the sum of
thousands of tiny decisions to follow through on commitments to
ourselves and our team.
When we commit to a personal goal, we hold ourselves to that goal rigorously…
even if we think no one else is looking. We take pride in consistently
delivering on the personal goals we set, because our individual choices are what
add up to team-level success or failure.
As a team, we set big goals and hold ourselves and our teammates accountable to
making them happen, by focusing on each small step needed to get there.
We continuously aim higher, but we work to never over-promise and under-deliver.
When we do, we take it seriously, reflect on the learnings, and apply those
learnings to our next goal.

Packback Values
#4: We never stop moving forward
(no matter how small the step).
Building an organization is like running a marathon; many people dream of the finish line, but
don’t put in the hundreds of thousands of steps to reach it. We take pride in every small step.
Our growth rate is far more important than where we are right now. Today should
simultaneously be the best we have ever been, and the worst we will ever be.
While we always seek to understand and address problems at their root cause, we do not let
this become an excuse for passing over small in-the-moment opportunities to improve. We
commit to leave each part of the business that we touch better than we found it.
As a team, we agree to “Disagree & Commit” when we make a decision, because an imperfect
decision is better than no decision at all. If the idea fails, we celebrate that failure as an
opportunity to learn.

Packback Values
#5: We earn leadership through humility,
ownership, and optimism.
No one has ever been (or will ever be) simply “given” a leadership role at Packback...leadership and
respect are earned by taking responsibility. Leadership is something that we continuously earn through
our choices, not something any of us permanently have. Every small task, action, or decision is an
opportunity to be an owner of this organization.
Everyone at Packback is an entrepreneur and builds their own leadership role through taking ownership,
looking for ways to make Packback better, and getting stuff done. Packback has infinite ways it can
improve- so if any of us notice something that could be better, we choose to approach it with optimistic
curiosity and then we take action.
It’s easy to be cynical, and it’s hard to be a creator. Strive to strike the right balance between between
dissatisfaction with where we are today and optimism about how we can solve those problems.

Packback Values
#6: We employ an investor’s mindset.
As an education company, it is our duty to students and professors to invest our
time and resources in the way that will create the greatest impact. We have to act
as investors with every dollar we earn from selling our product, because it needs to bring
far more than a dollar of value back into the lives of students.
Because time and resources are limited, we choose to focus on what differentiates us and
allows us to make the biggest impact around our purpose, and we find ways to offload
what does not.
The simplest solution is almost always the best. If we can test a concept with a one-
day project, or build a full “ideal” version out in 6 weeks, we choose to test the concept
first. Since we learn as much from disproving a hypothesis as we do from proving one,
we want to learn quickly if something will not work so that we can choose to invest
elsewhere.

Packback Values
#1: We are fearlessly curious.
#2: We are radically kind.
#3: We do what we say
we will do.
#4: We never stop moving forward (no
matter how small the step).
#5: We are leaders through
ownership, optimism, and
humility.
#6: We employ an investor’s
mindset.
Best Solution
We solve problems by finding a solution
that balances all of the values.

Team Norms / Expectations
Team-Level Norms and Expectations exist to:
1) Connect our Values to specific, trackable actions upon which training can be
created and feedback can be shared.
2) Allow each team to adapt the values to the systems and norms that best suit the
team’s goals and working styles.
3) The Values provide the compass on how we decide to set team norms and
expectations. In turn, the Values are tangibly demonstrated by way of executing
on Team Expectations/Processes/Norms. The relationship is symbiotic.
Team Norms / Expectations

Team Norms / Expectations
Every Packback team (Sales, Marketing, Account Management, Recruiting,
Engineering, Product, etc.) have their own team expectations and norms that
were built out to be tangible ways to exemplify the values in daily work.
These expectations and norms are constantly being evolved as we grow as a
team and can see new ways to better exemplify our values in our daily work.
If you’re thinking about joining the team at Packback, ask your interviewers about
the norms on their specific team and how they relate to the values!
Each team is unique, but they all share the
purpose and the values.