Cooperation is humanity's superpower. All the abundances of our modern age owe their existence to a vast choreography of people and organizations. But the way we cooperate in the world of bits could be a lot smoother - despite decades of investment, software integration is on average a tedious exercise that's riddled with accidental complexity. It is simply harder than it needs to be.

We want to change that. The Nerve Engine is our first step towards a future where the world's apps, tools, and infrastructure are invisibly and pervasively intertwined. A future where software not only "just works", it just works together.

Nerves are everywhere in the human body. Your stomach, your heart, and even your bones have a silent army of nerves, collecting information, relaying commands, and conducting a delicate symphony of processes. Your nerves are what make you a person instead of a bunch of organs.

We want to be the nerves of the software industry, tying together the passion and creativity of millions of people into something much greater than the sum of its parts.

We hope you'll join us along the way.

Who we are

We make a distinction between values and operating principles. We have many operating principles, but only five values.

Operating principles detemine how we work, and are always in flux - if a principle isn't setting us up for success, we scrap it and come up with a better one. Our values, by contrast, are an end in themselves, as they reflect who we are and what's important to us. Accordingly, they are set in stone.

We are curious

We value knowledge for its own sake. We love learning new things, even if they fall outside of our specialty, and even if we don't yet know how we'll put them to use. We believe that good ideas can come from anywhere, and cross-pollination between disciplines greatly benefits everyone involved.

Our favorite question is "why?" It's hard for us to leave a mystery alone - we always want to know more. We gather ideas whenever we can and wherever we go; it's how we're wired.

We are creative

We're in the software business because we love to build. We believe the details matter and craftsmanship pays off. We embrace and investigate ideas that sound crazy or impractical. We obsessively prototype and experiment.

We know it's not easy to make something new, so we diligently study the creative process. We understand that creativity is enabled by discipline and technique, and take the time to master our art. We find joy producing beautiful things that weren't there before.

We are critical thinkers

Critical thinking is at heart a love of the truth. At Nerve, we make it a daily practice. We're honest with ourselves about what we know for sure, what we merely suspect, what we can't know right now, and what we can never know. We choose the paths that make sense to us, instead of chasing bandwagons or blindly deferring to authority.

We guard against complacency and arrogance by continually stress-testing our convictions. We don't take positions we can't lucidly defend. We understand that critical thinking takes constant work - but to us, it's worth it to see clearly.

Ethics matters to us

We believe companies that change the world have a profound obligation to change it for the better. We are committed to treating our clients, partners, and peers fairly and respectfully, without exception. We make money by helping our users, not exploting them.

Beyond that, we recognize that the tech industry has an outsized influence on politics, culture, the environment, and the economy, and we understand that our decisions may one day affect the lives of millions, most of whom aren't our customers. We take that responsibility extremely seriously. We think often about the way Nerve is impacting society, and if we don't like what we see, we make changes.

We're a team, and we have each other's backs

A healthy startup is a high-performance machine, like an F1 engine - you can't remove any of its components without destroying it. We recognize that every employee at Nerve is excellent at what they do and has a reason for being here (if they didn't, we wouldn't hire them.) Everyone is expected to learn about other departments and to understand how their team fits into the fabric of the business. There are no priesthoods at Nerve.

Most importantly, we care about our teammates and find ways to help each other. We know that we succeed together or not at all.

Our team

Matthew Prast

FounderMatthew has been writing software (and thinking about software) since he was twelve years old. Before starting Nerve, he was a dev at Microsoft and an early engineer at Gusto. In his spare time he enjoys running, writing, and doing math. He also has a secret double life as a singer and actor!