Companiesandme

It's hard for me to believe that the vision of Companiesandme is finally being unveiled today. That vision is to curate the rich stories of companies around us, and to bring us closer to the people behind them. As we unveil the site, I find myself completely inspired by the type of people who have taken the time to share their stories and engage in a real conversation with you.

There aren't many places where you can can find a founder of a well-respected local company talking passionately about how we should live our lives in "joy bubbles," celebrating every moment. Or about the deep introspections that followed a sobering accident and directed a new path toward art and building a tea company genuinely committed to the planet and the well-being of people on it. Or a brewery started in the Port of Oakland simply to bring beer production back to Oakland, after the city had been abandoned by brewers nearly 50 years ago. As people of the Bay Area, these are our companies, our home team, and it feels damn good to know that.

But Companiesandme is for the Bay Area companies that you love, not just the ones we do.

Because we want to curate the stories of the companies you love, we'd like to ask you to nominate them so that we can help them build deeper relationships and awareness of what they do. This site isn't about buying anything, it's about building real relationships, something precious in our hyper-connected world of go, go, go.

As our economy rebounds, I've already seen a growing number of companies surfacing that seem to question how we will do so. These smaller brands have something about them that exists far beyond product or price, only captured and shared in stories. And we hope to make it easier to discover those stories and companies right here.

Please nominate Bay Area companies you love: by responding below and/or on Twitter (I suggest including a link to this conversation and @companiesandme, as I did)

Nominated companies get to join Companiesandme risk-free and every dollar we earn this month goes to Haiti earthquake relief.

Why: We wouldn't feel right taking the money of a company you nominate, and while we could certainly use the subscription fees as a bootstrapped startup, it feels like the right thing to do. The people of Haiti could likely use it more than we can right now.

Some rules/commitments: We'll accept nominations through the end of February. It's our policy to refund the cost of the first month if the participating company isn't satisfied. And we'll still honor this and send every dollar they paid to Haiti either way (out of our own pockets, if the cost of their subscription is refunded). 

Nominated companies must:
- Be in northern CA
- Be independently owned (there are some great publicly traded companies out there, but it's the independent ones that can't share their stories during American Idol)
- Make a physical product (service businesses tend to be inherently relationship-based, but it is harder to really get to know people behind product companies)

Finally, we have to reserve the right to be selective about which companies we allow on the site. We poured our hearts into what you see, to ensure that it would build relationships with companies committed to a two-way conversation.

Thanks in advance for building on our hard work by inviting the companies you love to feature their stories and connect with you on the site. If you have any other ideas or feedback, please do share them below or send us an email at hello at companiesandme.com.

Image credit, with great appreciation: Thomas Hawk