It started for us, as a company, on what we now know as #BlackoutTuesday. We were supposed to launch an interview from our mini-series about no-code & introduce our first wave of new tutorial content. But it didn’t feel right. It felt tone-deaf. While we’re in the throes of building a start-up & business built to empower people in all walks of life—there is a battle being waged for the humanity of people of color.
We grappled with how to respond—how to be authentic & not opportunistic, how to show we actively care while recognizing that we are a predominantly white company and our voices aren’t the ones that matter right now.
Ultimately, we decided we did not want to remain silent and in this process, we started to recognize that we have more to discuss as a young company. Up until this point we've been so focused on our mission & building an amazing no-code platform that we haven’t even solidified our company values — but we clearly can’t wait any longer to begin dissecting what we want to stand for as a company. It’s abundantly clear that our mission is to give the 99% of the world access to developing software that is available to 1% of the population right now. To empower new voices & creativity. The entire no-code movement is about empowering people to create new means of income, to serve the under-represented, and to open up a new world that did not previously exist outside learning to code. It’s fair to say that we care about those that have been relegated to the fringe, and we’re working on breaking down some of the barriers that keep them there. We believe each time someone who is under-represented is given a voice, a seat at the table, & an opportunity to explore the full range of their potential — our world benefits.
Right now & throughout our history, Black Americans & people of color have been unfairly oppressed, unjustly persecuted, and under-represented in almost every aspect of our society. Not only is this unacceptable to us, as people, but it works against our mission at Adalo. We want to lift up the voices, creativity, and ideas of everyone & when that is being stifled for any member or population of our community, we cannot be silent.
As we continued to internally discuss what we stand for at Adalo, we wanted to make sure our words were not hollow. That they were backed up with action. Not only are we committed to doing the unlearning, but also the learning to shape a different society for all members. We are taking the opportunity to listen, read, discuss & get uncomfortable — because discomfort is the only way we will change.
In full transparency, this has been unsettling for many of us. But our discomfort is nothing in comparison to what the black community has faced & continues to face. While we may have done the work privately, we owe it to ourselves, our company, and our community to do the work publicly as well. One of the ways we can publicly address what is going on is by developing a set of company values to hold ourselves accountable. So that’s where we’re beginning. Next, we’re opening up a company-wide dialogue grounded in education. We’ll start by reading Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, by Beverly Daniel Tatum. This is the beginning for us, and we know this will be the catalyst for more work that needs to be done.
While, at the time of this writing, we have not fully solidified all of our values — we know one thing for sure: we exist to empower & right now, we’ll do what we can to empower those that have been disenfranchised.
