Somnus Explained · Issue Nº 05
What It's
Like to Be
With Us.
How we work, plainly stated.
Editor's Note: This is part of Somnus Explained, a series describing who we are, what we make, and the principles that guide our work.
We are asked, more than you would think, what it is actually like to work with us. Here is how we would describe it: plainly, in our own words, without the acronyms a values page usually carries.
What you would feel, if you spent a week on our side of the table, is the substance below. Read it as commitments rather than as decoration.
How we think about being plain
We try to be clear with patients, providers, investors, and each other about what we are building and why. We try to do the right thing when no one is watching it, which is most of the time. We try not to dress up what is plain.
That is a habit, and we are protective of it. The honest description of what we do reads better than the inflated one, every time we have checked.
How we think about who has the expertise
Providers know things about patients that we cannot know. So we listen to providers first. Our clinical advisor is in active practice and sees the unmet need every week. The advisory table has met patients. The decisions about what care should look like are not made by people who have never been in the room with one.
That is a discipline as much as it is a value. It also makes the work better.
How we think about building
We move. We ship. We learn by doing more than by planning. We would rather have a shipped thing in the world that we can read and respond to than a perfect plan that has not met a user yet.
That posture is what makes a closed loop possible. It is also what makes the work fun. People who like to build like working this way; people who prefer to deliberate at length probably will not.
How we think about earning trust
Trust is earned by what is delivered. We try to deliver clinical efficacy. We try to deliver affordability. We try to deliver on time.
Those three commitments are what “earning trust” means to us in practice. None of them is rhetorical. Each of them is a thing we either do or fail to do, and we are honest with ourselves about which.
A note on conversation
We are a small company, and the way we say what we say is the way we mean it. If something here reads differently from how we sound in person, that is a defect; tell us.
We are glad to talk further. Reach us at [email protected].