murmur: Public Work Agreements for Startups

Murmur Aims to Amplify Startup Transparency with Work Agreement Platform

With the growing trend of “building in public” among early-stage startups, Murmur is emerging from stealth mode to capitalize on this openness. The platform intends to amplify this natural transparency.

Creating Work Agreements Based on Shared Policies

Founded by Aaron Dignan, Murmur assists startups in developing work agreements by leveraging the established policies of other companies. A work agreement encompasses all team decisions regarding work processes, including parental leave, strategic objectives, and hiring procedures.

Dignan explains that these agreements address “everything you’ve ever argued about [within your startup].”

Leveraging Transparency for Efficiency

This approach necessitates a degree of transparency within the startup community, requiring companies to publicly share their policies. However, if successful, Murmur could significantly reduce the time early-stage founders spend developing policies from the ground up, covering areas like hiring, OKR goals, and vacation time.

Founders can instead utilize the shared policies of experienced companies as a foundation, customizing them to fit their specific needs.

$1.8 Million Funding to Scale the Platform

Murmur recently announced a $1.8 million funding round led by Lerer Hippeau, with participation from SemperVirens, Human Ventures, and Remote First Capital. Additional investors include Steve Schlafman, Mariano Suarez-Battan (CEO of Mural), Brian Sugar (CEO of PopSugar), and Adam Pisoni (co-founder of Yammer).

Currently in private beta, the platform is scheduled for a public launch in early summer 2021.

How the Murmur Platform Works

Murmur is a web-based platform designed to help startups author, customize, and implement policies that define their team culture. It facilitates the process from proposal to decision-making, offering features like voting, editing, and feedback mechanisms.

Rather than simply copying another startup’s policy, Murmur encourages founders to use existing policies as starting points, adding their own customizations.

The Importance of Inclusive Agreement Building

“Anybody can Google and find some company’s years-old processes; the trick is in making an inclusive ‘agreement’ with a real team all participating [and] the magic of keeping it and iterating it, and improving it,” Dignan stated.

Currently, access to publicly listed company agreements is free. However, utilizing the Murmur platform to create and customize agreements based on this information requires a paid subscription. This suggests Dignan believes the platform itself is the primary value proposition, rather than the content alone.

Pricing and Future Plans

The team is still finalizing pricing, but the current plan involves a free trial followed by a monthly per-seat fee ranging from $12 to $15 per user. Future plans include offering premium “kits” of tools on the platform.

Targeting Fast-Growing, Publicly-Operating Startups

Murmur’s initial target customers are rapidly growing startups that already embrace public operations, such as Buffer, Basecamp, Lattice, and Blinkist. However, the platform could also prove valuable to larger enterprises in the future.

A "Best-Practices-as-a-Service" Trend

Murmur is part of a growing trend of companies offering “best-practices-as-a-service.” These companies go beyond simply providing SaaS tools; they actively encourage startups to utilize those tools in the most effective way possible.

If Murmur achieves scale, it could assist the next generation of startups in establishing optimal company-building practices.

Aiming to be the "GitHub for Working Practices"

Dignan envisions Murmur as “doing for working practices what GitHub did for code.”

Remote Work as a Catalyst

The rise of remote work is a key driver for Murmur, as the transition has highlighted the importance of transparency, standards, and communication within organizations.

Building a Repository of Top Company Agreements

While currently focused on Murmur work agreements, the platform plans to incorporate agreements from numerous companies in the coming months. Curating agreements from leading companies is crucial to Murmur’s success, even though the platform itself is the core differentiator.

The company is not compensating companies for publicly listing their agreements, relying instead on the branding benefits of transparency and improved recruitment.

A Long-Term Vision

Dignan notes that connections from his book on the future of work will aid in securing these agreements. He doesn’t view Murmur as a direct response to the pandemic, despite writing about the future of work before the global crisis.

“I’ve been thinking about this tool for seven years,” he explained. He initially hesitated, believing an opinionated tool wouldn’t have a large enough market. He waited until the ecosystem was ready for a solution beyond “yet another customer engagement tool.”

The convergence of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the election signaled a need for new ways of working, making it the right time to launch Murmur.

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