The CEO of popular startup Glitch says that it's allowing literally anybody to apply to be on its board of directors because it's the best way to prevent the employee backlashes sweeping Silicon Valley
- On Friday, Anil Dash posted an open call for a new board member, with the goal of continuing to build a culture and openness and accountability at the company.
- Glitch is a browser-based tool for writing code aimed to help make collaboration easier for developers, and its widely used by programmers at companies like Google, Microsoft, Spotify and Slack.
- Dash's choice to post an open call for a board member is significant during a time when tech workers at big companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, are increasingly taking a stand and calling on their companies to change policies and practices.
- "If we can be a company that is responsible enough that people do trust us and see that another route's possible that's super for us, that's a superpower," Dash told Business Insider. "If we can do something that the biggest companies in the world can't do, that's awesome."
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Employees at tech companies are increasingly taking a stand. Over the past year, tech workers at Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft and other tech companies have published open letters, protested at shareholder meetings and even walked out on the job, in a push to get their employers to change policies and practices.
Anil Dash, CEO of web programming platform Glitch and one of Business Insider's 100 people transforming business, is trying to get ahead of that.
Last week, Dash posted that Glitch was taking a novel, perhaps unprecedented move in the world of tech startups: An open call for a new board member. Where most startups cherry-pick their board from a select group of top execs and significant investors, Dash says that he wants an outsider to snag one of those seats at Glitch.
Glitch has 50 employees and last year raised $30 million in Series A funding from investors including Tiger Global.
He said the open call is in line with Glitch's culture of openness and accountability: In his view, having an outsider on the board is the best way to ensure that leadership stays accountable and lives up to its ethical responsibilities to its users.
"The needs of our community and the needs of our workers - they're really closely aligned to accountability from leadership," Dash told Business Insider.
Dash said he's looking to add at least one voting board member, and possibly a few non-voting board observers. The call will stay open though December, with the goal of picking someone by January. The new board member will be compensated in equity, but no salary, which Dash said is customary for company at its stage.
Beyond holding company leadership more accountable, Dash said that the ideal candidate will have the skills to help inform and shape company strategy, expand the company's network of relationships, and assist with operational matters like recruiting or partnerships.
Trust as a two-way street
Glitch is a browser-based tool for writing code and works a bit like Google Docs, so multiple programmers can work on the same code at the same time. For the general public, it's a creative community for quickly and easily building simple web apps. For businesses, Glitch has found a niche as an easy way for developers at companies like Google, Microsoft, Spotify, and Slack to collaborate on and develop prototypes for their apps.
In all cases, Dash says, trust is important, which is why it's important to have an outside voice in a position of authority who can warn the company if it's veering too far in one direction or the other.
"People don't want to share things or communicate with each other unless they trust the platform. And then I think that in particular social platforms right now, people are very keenly aware of how bad it can go wrong when it goes wrong," Dash said, in an apparent reference to Facebook's seemingly nonstop string of scandals.
He also wants to make sure the company's workforce feels like their concerns are being heard and addressed.
He said Glitch's workforce is now majority women and non-binary folks, and 30 percent identify as LGBTQ+, with "proportional race representation." Having an outsider on the board is one more control to make sure that the company does right by them, he said.
"By every factor we have a far higher percentage of underrepresented people in our company than any major tech company. And as a result, a lot of us have experiences having management and leadership that...didn't put us first or wasn't accountable," Dash said.
A unique approach
Glitch's move to bring on an outsider comes amid a rising tide of employee activism in Silicon Valley and beyond, as tech workers increasingly take action to protest against employers that they say don't share their values.
At Amazon's shareholder meeting this past May, the company rejected two proposals put forward by employees and shareholders on to ban the use and sale of facial recognition technology to government agencies. Employees at Google held a worldwide walkout in November 2018 to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment claims.
Most germane, at Microsoft's annual shareholder meeting in December board members, will vote on a proposal to let an employee sit on the board. In the company's proxy statement, Microsoft's board calls the proposal unnecessary and that it won't "enhance shareholder value."
Dash said while Glitch put out the open call because it felt like it was right for the company, he doesn't shy away from the comparison to big tech companies that might be struggling to keep employee trust.
"I think absolutely the current environment of people being skeptical and mistrustful is one, well deserved. And two, is an opportunity for those of us that can build trust," Dash said.
And on the flip side, Dash says, having that level of trust with its community and employees could potentially give it a kind of competitive advantage.
"If we can be a company that is responsible enough that people do trust us and see that another route's possible, that's super for us, that's a superpower," Dash said. "If we can do something that the biggest companies in the world can't do, that's awesome."
Investing in openness
Dash says that this call for a board member is part of what he sees as an investment in a culture of openness. As a relatively small startup, Dash says, it's important to work on that culture now so it remains in place as the company grows. That includes policies like making the company handbook public - and making it so every employee can see their coworkers' compensation.
In the long-term, the payoff is a culture where employees feel that they can trust leadership to treat them and any future concerns with respect. If employees don't feel that way early on, Dash says, it can lead to problems down the line.
"For the long term what we want to build is such a deep level of transparency and trust that there's accountability," he said of his goals for Glitch. "When you don't do that for years and decades, and you commit excesses or abuses, as we've seen in so many companies, they're of course gonna demand accountability," he added.
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