Scaling our culture - How we operate at TrueLayer

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Francesco Simoneschi, CEO & CO-Founder
20 Mar 2020
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At TrueLayer we’re committed to accelerating the growth of open banking to generate massive cost saving and efficiency for Financial Services, B2B Payments, and E-Commerce. How we achieve this is ultimately driven by our culture and core principles: Value People, Take Risks, Think Big, Own It, Enjoy Life. They run through how we build products, how we treat each other, and how we interact with our partners and clients.

As TrueLayer continues to grow, my co-founder Luca and I believe company culture is the most critical thing we need to get right. Truer still as we enter hyper-growth. Fun fact about Luca and I: TrueLayer isn’t our first joint venture. We successfully founded three companies together before founding TrueLayer in 2016. We’re trying to build a culture here that reflects everything that worked in our past experiences. At the core of this is creating an environment that we love to be part of every day.

When is the right time to define core principles or ‘values’?

In the early days - when we were all able to fit around one table - company culture didn’t need to be defined; it was quite simply a product of the interactions of early employees. We were able to efficiently self normalise, quickly course correct, and adapt to behaviours based on explicit and implicit feedback we provided to each other.

In early 2019, our headcount began to grow. Once we reached 40+, the scale of operations started to change rapidly, and so did the number of conversations, interactions, and decisions that needed to happen every day. It became clear that we needed to codify a way of working that would allow us to push decision making to the edge of the business, while simultaneously empowering everyone to be independent and to act with consistency. We decided it was time to define our operating principles and culture.

The process of defining the TrueLayer Culture Playbook 📖

It was essential to us that what we put forward resonated with the team. For this reason, we invested a lot of time in getting the process right - an entire two quarters, to be exact. We defined our own methodology, conducted research, listened to what people had to say, and gathered data through surveys and forum discussions. A special thanks go to our colleagues, Gerisha, Ares, and Alison, who led this project with tremendous passion, patience, and perseverance. 💪

The result of this work is the TrueLayer Culture Playbook, which sets out five fundamental principles that are important to us at TrueLayer when it comes to culture, and how we operate. The playbook is a mixture of unique principles we currently embody that make up our team DNA, as well as principals we aspire to embedded in our culture. We expect this to evolve and change as we grow, but for now, these are our guiding principles when it comes to navigating life at TrueLayer.

Our guiding principles

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Value People 👪

People matter at TrueLayer. We believe that we will win together as a team. We are not here to compete with one another but rather to support, collaborate, and bring out the best in each other. We celebrate each other’s unique traits and value individual strengths. We recognise that we all have weaknesses, and that's ok. TrueLayer is a place where each person can be their most authentic, TRUE self.

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Take Risks ⚡

We are a startup at the forefront of innovation in the open banking space. To deliver the very best products to our clients, we believe that we need to think creatively, push boundaries, act fast, and take calculated risks. Being transparent and open with one another allows us to move forward and make progress, even when things are uncertain.

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Own It! 💯

At TrueLayer, we execute. We build, make, and do things. We are all equally responsible for the success of the company. Each person is empowered and encouraged to impact the business in positive ways. If you see a problem, we want you to solve it, without waiting for permission or encouragement.

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Think Big 🌎

We are a company with big, bold, global aspirations. We are powering the new era of financial innovation. To be successful, every person in the company needs to think about the future of our company and the future of the industry. We need to set big, ambitious goals. At times, things can feel overwhelming, so planning and starting small are key!

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Enjoy Life 🎉

Everyone has a life that encompasses more than work. We encourage TrueLayeristas to take care of their well-being, and cultivate a life that makes them happy and fulfilled both in and outside of work. Our people are our greatest assets, and work-life balance is key to a healthy, happy team.


We are extremely proud of the culture we are building. As our team continues to grow, I’m excited to see how our culture and principles will evolve.

Join us if you see yourself reflected in our values and are excited to contribute to the open banking economy.

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