Our Values
Five filters every decision passes through.
Our values are the operating filter we've used to make decisions — on pricing, product, support, even what work to turn down — through both 5000fish (from 2009) and OakTree Enterprise Solutions (from 1999) before that.
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Our first priority is to make things easier, not harder.
The north star. Everything else descends from this.
We have this philosophy in mind when we build our software — and in every other part of the business: pricing, onboarding, renewals, support, sales conversations. When a decision creates friction for a customer, we look for another decision. That's why we publish our pricing, and why white-label and row-level security are included in every plan instead of paywalled.
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We're a customer service company at heart.
We make software. But we operate like a services company.
Sure, we make some awesome software products. But the entire team lives by the credo that we're a services company first — focused on delivering the experience and support that ensures our customers are actually happy. If something's wrong, the person who can fix it is the person you reach.
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We take feedback really seriously.
Lost deals ship features. Every conversation teaches us something.
When you give us feedback — small or large — know that it doesn't fall on deaf ears. A demo that doesn't convert teaches us where the gap is. A support ticket about something we never thought about becomes the basis for next week's release. Then we ship the fix.
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Your best interest is our best interest.
25+ years with no bait-and-switch.
When we make decisions internally, the litmus test is simple: "Is this in the best interest of our customers?" If the answer is no, we go back and come up with a better solution. We've never raised prices on existing customers without fair notice or paywalled a security feature that was previously included. And we've never told a prospect we were a fit when we weren't — we'll point you to other tools (sometimes even competitors) when that's the honest answer.
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We're humble.
Show, don't tell.
We try to let our actions — and our customers — speak for themselves. We treat every customer with the same level of respect, regardless of how big or small the company is, and we don't take ourselves too seriously. It's how a small bootstrapped company competes with industry giants — by being demonstrably better, not by claiming to be.
Values you can hold us to.
If you ever experience an interaction with 5000fish that doesn't reflect these, tell us. Feedback in, behavior corrected, product improved — that's the loop.