So, our values are actually very, very strong and been embedded and sort of talked about. And I would say the first value for us is “leading with love.” And so one of our core principles in building the marketplace is, when you focus on love, money comes; when you focus on money, nothing comes. And that’s embedded in how we look at our community.
So, for example, we partnered with a community on day one. Back in 2011/2012, when we first saw the marketplace, we had a certain fee structure, which was basically the sellers get to keep 80% of every sale, and we get 20%. But for 20%, we’d give them everything, there’s no sort of separate fee for this feature, or that feature.
From 2011/2012 to today, 10 years later, that fee has remained the same. And we’ve kept increasing the platform and never sort of asked for anything more, which is pretty unique amongst the marketplaces.
Similarly, when you look at sort of internally in our company, it’s really all about having that love for each other and treating each other with respect. And that’s reflected in the fact that so many of my team have been working together. And we’ve been working as a team for not a decade, sometimes two decades together, right? And that comes from that mutual connection, where engagement ends up driving that growth with each other. And we’re probably one of the unique companies, but after 11 years, all three of my co-founders are still with me on this journey. And then the second value for us is “embracing your weirdness,” and that’s really very much, in modern times, we think of diversity. But it really is recognizing that each person no matter what they look like from the outside, feels very strange inside and feels like they don’t fit in the world. Once you acknowledge that about yourself, it’s easy to accept others. So, by embracing your weirdness, you accept other people’s weirdness, which tells you that everyone is really unique, and you can bring them together. And that allows an ecosystem to come together. It doesn’t matter who you are and how you look from the outside, you can come together. That’s very embedded in our community as well.
And in fact, one of the things that is powerful is not just the skin color, or your ethnicity or your gender, but also your age. We’ve had Posh Fest, one of our big conferences, we’ve had an 18-year-old girl, her mother, and her grandmother all coming together to the conference and all selling on Poshmark together.
The third value is focusing on people, which is a very important value. And then the fourth one, I think, is the most important in some ways is, we call it “together, we grow”. And ultimately, it’s all about growth. Because if you’re not doing, we’re not happy. But we can’t grow individually alone. It’s a personal journey. It’s a journey shared with the community. So if you think about community and growth coming together, that sort of our values, you know, love, weirdness, people, community, and growth.
