Orum is a remote-first company, and that means many of our team members haven’t necessarily met in person. That was true even for me as founder and CEO—until last week, when we held an All Hands meeting in New York. Honestly, I used to wonder if IRL team events would feel like an awkward wedding-guest table: people thrown together who don’t really know each other, trying desperately to find some common ground.
But Orum has built a “remote, not distant” culture. It’s our lifeblood. And that shows in moments like our All Hands: Everyone greeted each other with bear hugs and lots of laughs, and we left having made true connections over deep conversations.
We design these All Hands events with a lot of intentionality. For one, we don’t plan them annually or on any other kind of regular schedule. We have to earn that opportunity to come together in person. This year certainly fit the bill, with new products like our patent-pending bank account verification solution Verify, our status as a launch partner for FedNow, support for new use cases, and so much more.
We also plan for these events to be pretty short—capitalizing on the energy and excitement at its peak. We kick off with special dinners the night before our company-wide meeting, in which each of our executives hosts a dinner with team members from several different functions. At those dinners, we focused more on the personal than the work: We talked about New Year’s resolutions, asked our teammates what’s the best $5 they’ve ever spent, and found out who owns a tattoo gun. (Last Thursday, as I came home from the dinner I hosted, each member of my executive team called me to say their dinner was undoubtedly the best!)
Friday was all about Team Orum, with a packed one-day agenda rather than stretching everything over half a week. This year, we invited several Orum customers to be our special guests, and they told us firsthand about what it’s like to work with us for payments and instant bank account verification.
Let me tell you: That was powerful.
Of course we loved hearing comments like “we decided to buy within hours of seeing your product,” and that “integrating with your platform was the easiest thing our engineering team has ever done.” But Team Orum was even more moved by our customers’ deeply personal stories about how our technology has helped them further their company mission—and pay it forward.
One Orum customer who works in wholesale distribution shared the story of a representative who came to work for him. Previously this worker had never earned more than $15 per hour. But by becoming a rep for this company, which leverages Orum technology for instant payouts, he now walks out of work every day with substantial commission income that’s immediately available to him. He finally took his family to Disney World—a longtime dream that he thought was out of reach.
That’s why we dream big at Orum:
We know that by changing the financial system, we can create financial opportunity and access. We have an incredible foundation heading into 2024, and Team Orum is dreaming bigger than ever.
