As we've discussed in earlier posts, Mike and I got excited and started working on Struggle Buddy because of a few factors. First, we're friends with complimentary skill sets and the desire to build something together. Second, we were starting to take better care of ourselves through diet and exercise and had decided to team up and hold each other accountable. But finally, we both had a desire to build something that isn't just profitable or useful. We want to create something good.

Now, "good" is subjective, though. Facebook is good in a lot of ways. It connects me to friends and family all over the world. But it does this while also acting as a vehicle of manipulation, polarization, and social retardation. The profit model is anchored on addicting the user to drive attention to advertisers. Same thing with Google. It puts an incredible amount of information at my fingertips on this laptop and the phone in my pocket. At the same time, it seems to be built around creating echo chambers through selective algorithms who are more aware of my own biases than I am myself. This list goes on and on and has been documented in books and documentaries far more eloquently than I can here.

Within all that context, Mike and I want to create something good. That is, we don't want it to be addictive or based on screen time. The point of the app isn't to be the app. The idea was born out of friendship and personal improvement. That's the framework we want to build in. Helping people improve themselves through personal connections.

So, one of the first things we did when we sat down to start working on Struggle Buddy was to have an ethics conversation. We discussed our influences and desires, covering several key topics:

As we define and begin to mold the first version of Struggle Buddy, we're intentionally keeping these promises to ourselves and our future customers in mind. It's a part of the design philosophy and the revenue model. It's what inspired us to create our first mission statement: "Helping everyday people to form positive habits through personal connections and mutual accountability". We're certain that that mission statement will go through many iterations as we learn about our own product, ourselves, and our customers. But its core, I hope, will endure. We're here to enable positive change through growth and connections.

This will be a cornerstone of our culture as the company eventually expands. If an applicant knows about Mark Cuban and not Tristan Harris, they're probably not going to be the right fit. They'll need to be a person of character, uncompromising ethics, and a desire to better the world through humane technology.