At 10X, we hold a company-wide offsite four times a year. It's an important occasion for connecting everyone who normally works from different backgrounds, in different locations, on different missions.
At the October offsite, there was a leadership panel discussion, and when asked "What's something you're proud of about this company?", I answered without hesitation: integrity.
I first tried to define integrity as "not lying" — but that didn't quite feel right.
Thinking about it more afterward, I arrived at this: integrity, at its core, is being genuinely serious about the world of others as you are about your own world. And I believe the substance of it is imagination. "Not lying" is one element required for that attitude, but it's a component, not the whole thing.
"Not lying" can also be described as "being negotiable."
Just days before Russia invaded Ukraine in February of this year, Russian diplomacy was sending signals that there would be no invasion. What happened next is known to everyone. This wasn't an isolated case — Russia's entire approach to that war has been consistently: "even deception is a tactic."
War in a world of reason is not "anything goes." It's conducted under certain humanitarian commitments — don't target civilians, don't attack medical facilities — as a means of diplomacy. Russia's habitual dishonesty made negotiation impossible for Ukraine and the West, and that impossibility is part of what's driving the current tragedy.
Every worldview has its own sense of justice. But what allows different worldviews to intersect is negotiation, and what kills negotiation is lies.
Looking back at 10X: every member of this team feels like someone you could negotiate with — no matter who you are. There's a genuine seriousness about 10X's world, about the other members, about job candidates, about partner companies. That's what I mean by integrity.
I believe this attitude is sustained by the ability to imagine others' joy and pain through the lens of one's own. Solving the problems that partners and customers face, finding ways to increase employees' sense of meaning, aligning goals with investors — there are many different ways to work at 10X, but I think the root of everyone's integrity, including mine, is the capacity to truly feel for others through your own experience.
And one more thing. I think integrity also means valuing your own world. Not lying to yourself — having a stance and holding to it, speaking it.
10X has a Mission and Values as its core identity. These are sometimes called "culture," but I'm now certain that integrity is a real and important part of 10X's culture. Culture is 1% explicit and 99% implicit. Integrity may have been in the 99% until now.
Even though it isn't formally stated, I hope it remains as a permanent pillar of this company alongside Mission and Values. And 10X already has a dedicated team and executive focused on culture. The fact that we made that decision early, and that it's embraced company-wide, is something I'm proud of.
