The Helius Manifesto

A startup is the best way of compressing your future time, potential, and pain into a shorter, higher intensity timeframe with peers on the same mission. Done successfully, being part of a startup will exponentially strengthen your knowledge, skills, and future trajectory — in a way that is impossible to do so otherwise. But, it is not for everyone. There are no shortcuts, what you gain in potential earnings and resourcefulness, you will pay for in time and uncertainty. That is the tradeoff.

The Mission

Helius’ mission is to evolve capitalism through internet markets.

We believe free markets and capitalism are the best mechanisms for increasing the prosperity, productivity and potential of individuals. But, we are still stuck in the stone age. The world has entered the information age in messaging and media, but markets, and money, have lagged behind. Our aim is to fix this — specifically in a way that would not exist without us.

Our Operating Principles

• Faster: this is the main principle behind everything we do. Speed is the default behind all decisions. Everything should be faster: API calls, customer support, meetings, calls, sales cycles, and even your typing speed. Yes, I am serious about the typing speed. We care about making decisions quickly and course correcting even quicker. We do not waste time intellectualizing into decision paralysis because we know that useful information is a result of action.
• Divine Discontent: nothing is more demoralizing than mediocrity. Everyone at a startup has made a commitment to trade in their current time and comfort in the pursuit of an exponential outcome. Do not let yourself or your peers ship something they’re not excited about. If you think “good enough” is an acceptable sequence of words or if you don’t enjoy the intrinsic process of aiming for excellence, my ask is you work elsewhere.
• Clear Communication: maximize context per sentence, add TL;DRs, don’t use fluff words (Replace ”I guess we could” with “I will finish this by X PM on Monday”), and remove unnecessary words. Default to directness over superficial politeness. Respect the reader and their time.
• Action: we are not paper-pushers, we are builders. We don’t get feedback from perceived status, we get feedback from the market. Ship something, get it out, get feedback. Take action. Replace all “I would/could/should” with “I will”.
• Optimism: if you don’t believe the future can be better than the present through hard work and agency, you have picked the wrong company.

Our Expectations

These are the traits we continuously evaluate in ourselves and our peers:

• Ownership & Agency: are you a passenger or are you a driver? Did it matter you showed up today? Are you proactive? Do not wait for things to come to you, instead make them happen. We don’t care about your name, the hours you work, or your title — we care about your actions.
• Execution: we don’t get paid for ideas, we get paid for shipping things people use. Before asking for feedback, first ask yourself: “Am I excited about what I built? Do I feel good attaching my name to this?” if your answer contains excuses, try again.
• Communication: we're a remote company. This gives you freedom and flexibility, but requires deliberate communication. Poor communication slows everyone down, violating our core principle of speed. Be clear, succinct, and direct. Give your peers full context so they can move fast without endless back-and-forth. Strong written communication is non-negotiable - if yours needs work, work on it. Bad writing is a sign of bad thinking.

What’s Unique About Being at Helius

What can you do at Helius that you can’t do anywhere else?

• Develop the frontier of high-scale, low-latency distributed systems in adversarial environments with high-stakes and impact
• Scale crypto and blockchain holistically, from first principles
• Build and accelerate the first global financial computer
• Increase the economic potential of the world
• Update the financial system
• Evolve capitalism
• Own mission-critical systems end to end without bureaucracy