The Frappe Way
The core essence of Frappe lies in its democratic culture and the philosophy of freedom.
Freedom. Excellence. Authenticity.
At Frappe, there are no reporting managers. You choose what you work on, decide your own pay, plan your own leaves and are responsible for your own outcomes. Frappe is a democratic workplace with a constitution in place. Decisions are made through unanimous voting, fierce debates and endless questions.
This isn’t just flexibility. It is deep, systematic trust in people. It can feel risky, chaotic and even ridiculous if you come from a typical corporate workplace. But if the goal is thoughtful, excellent work, this is the way to do it.
Why we do what we do
The Philosophy
The Philosophy
This way of working wasn’t invented at Frappe, nor were we the first to think about it. Pioneers like Ricardo Semler were running their companies this way decades ago. He proved that when you distribute power and trust people with information, it does wonders for both the people and the business. Though his story gave us some proof of concept, our real roots go back further. It started with how kids learn. When Rushabh Mehta, the Founder at Frappe was studying different education systems, he found that there were schools like Summer Hill in the UK and Sudbury Valley in the US that explored democratic education. These places would run on trust. Kids choose what to learn, manage their time and even vote on school rules.
If 10 year olds can handle these responsibilities, why do we treat adults at work like they can’t?
The question that shaped how we work at Frappe.
A Democratic Foundation
The Constitution
Freedom without rules is anarchy. Frappe has rules that are agreed upon by the team and written down in the constitution. At its core, people come first and capital comes second. It exists to protect the democratic nature of the culture and to ensure that the best ideas win through open communication and not authority.
Vision
Art for art’s sake
Shaped in the interest of the people and their growth, instead of revenue targets or capitalism. Frappe focuses on empowering individuals and their visions, and always will.
Values
Freedom by design
None of this works without a shared set of values. These values represent the trade offs the team has agreed to live with even when choices make things harder or slower.
The Values
None of this works without a shared set of values. These values represent the trade offs the team has agreed to live with even when choices make things harder or slower. They guide discussions and decisions and protect the kind of company Frappe will be.
The Vision
The vision is shaped in the interest of the people and their growth rather than revenue targets or being capitalist and evil. Frappe focuses on empowering individuals and their visions. We aspire to build great products and services, empower and educate, and be a democratically run organization.
The Values
None of this works without a shared set of values. These values represent the trade offs the team has agreed to live with even when choices make things harder or slower. They guide discussions and decisions and protect the kind of company Frappe will be.
People who make the magic happen
Team Frappe
Frappe team is made up of people with different backgrounds, skills and opinions. What connects them is a shared approach to ownership, responsibility and decision making. These are the folks who build, maintain and shape Frappe everyday.
Frappe has given me the freedom to do things at my pace but at the same time, it made me responsible. There were many highs and lows during the journey but I never lost track. I always got something interesting to work on.
Shariq Ansari
Product Engineer
Stories where freedom meets excellence
Unusual Journeys
In the early years of Frappe, most of the engineering team was busy building Frappe Framework and ERPNext. Aditya Hase joined as an intern and started working on some projects like Framework and Tally Migration tool.
But he wasn’t satisfied and he wanted to build an app that felt like his. Due to his prior experience, he was naturally drawn to creating a hosting platform. What started as a small experiment (“Press”) slowly grew into what we now know as Frappe Cloud. There was no grand pitch or big roadmap. He built what he was excited about and the rest followed as people saw value and started using it. The same curiosity and exploration has given us apps like Insights, Fusion and many more. Someone sees a possibility, feels strongly about it and builds it.
On the business side, Michelle Alva’s story is particularly worth sharing. She joined Frappe straight out of college and worked in customer support and then moved to implementation. She started noticing tiny broken gaps in our processes. Instead of complaining, she just started fixing them. One of which resulted in a 20% jump in revenue for the team.
She later led our ISO certification project, pushing us to improve our SLAs, security reviews, clearer policies and much more. Michelle is a skeptic by nature. She question everything, especially our need to always be radical, not to be difficult but because she genuinely cares about getting it right.
A pause for clarity.
We don’t optimise for constant busyness.
Stepping away creates space to think.
The best ideas often arrive quietly.
Forge your own path
Join the Team
Frappe will make you question your beliefs and thinking like no other experience, just because there are so little rules. This can be disorienting but ultimately rewarding. Once you experience the culture at Frappe, it is unlikely that you will be able to see things the same way again. You will get hurt a lot but also learn a lot, like every difficult journey in the end it’s going to be the one inside that matters.
If you enjoy autonomy, care deeply about your craft, and prefer clarity over hierarchy, you might feel at home here.
#freedom
#authenticity
#excellence
#transparency
#ownership
#democracy
#no-hierarchy
#self-driven
#remote-first
#pickyourownpay
#pickyourwork
#self-driven
This is Frappe.
“The unexamined life is not worth living”
~ Socrates
