How Building Anti-'Hustle' Culture Landed Us on Inc.'s Best Workplaces List

How Building Anti-'Hustle' Culture Landed Us on Inc.'s Best Workplaces List

Averi AI has been named to Inc.'s 2025 Best Workplaces list. Here's why this recognition matters—and why it almost didn't happen.

We'll be real with you: we almost didn't apply for Inc.'s Best Workplaces award.

Not because we don't think Averi is a great place to work, our team would probably stage a revolt if we said that, but because most "Best Places to Work" lists feel like a marketing ploy. Companies gaming metrics, optimizing for survey responses, treating workplace culture like another marketing campaign to win.

That's not us. That's not how we build.

But then we looked deeper into what Inc. was actually measuring. The evaluation process involved comprehensive employee surveys conducted by Quantum Workplace, covering management effectiveness, professional development, benefits audits, and—most importantly—authentic employee feedback.

They weren't looking for the companies with the best marketing. They were looking for the companies where people actually want to work.

Being named among the 514 companies recognized this year feels different because it reflects something we've been building from day one: a workplace that doesn't just talk about values—it operates from them.

The Anti-Hustle Culture Workplace

While the tech world glorifies 80-hour weeks as virtue signaling and "crushing it" as an identity, we've been building something entirely different.

Don't get us wrong—we work incredibly hard. When it matters, we put in 80-hour weeks. But we do it with purpose, not to puff our egos and brag about our overloaded calendars on Linkedin.

Averi's culture isn't about grinding for grinding's sake—it's about working intensely when it counts, with full autonomy over how and when you do your best work. This recognition validates what we've believed all along: you don't need to sacrifice your sanity to build something meaningful.

You need focus, freedom, and the space to think.

We work hard when there's real work to be done. We don't work hard to impress anyone or fill arbitrary hours. Our approach to workplace culture mirrors our approach to marketing: clarity over chaos, substance over spectacle, execution over endless meetings.

We hire exceptional people, give them the tools and autonomy they need, and trust them completely.

Take all the personal time you need. Grow into who you want to become. Just bring your A-game when it's game time. We prioritize outcomes over face time, creativity over compliance, and meaningful growth over just getting bigger.

This isn't about ping pong tables or unlimited PTO (though we have great benefits). It's about building a place where smart people can sprint when it matters and recover when it doesn't—without someone breathing down their neck about how they spend their Tuesday afternoon.

Culture as Strategy, Not Perks

Most companies treat their culture like an afterthought… something you tack on after you've figured out the "real" business stuff.

We've always known that's backwards. Culture isn't what you do after you build your business. Culture is how you build your business.

Every decision we make—from how we hire to how we ship product to how we support customers—flows from our core belief: AI should amplify human creativity, not replace it.

This philosophy doesn't just shape our product; it shapes how we work together.

We don't have layers of management because we don't need them.

We hire people who can think strategically and execute independently.

We don't have endless approval processes because we trust our team to make smart decisions.

We don't have pointless meetings because everyone's time is valuable.

What's this unlocked for us? A team that moves fast, thinks clearly, and actually enjoys coming to work. Not because we've gamified the workplace, but because we've removed the friction that makes most workplaces miserable.

What "Best Workplace" Actually Means

Inc.'s Best Workplaces recognition isn't just about our internal culture—it's validation of our entire approach to building a modern company. The same principles that make Averi a great place to work are the principles that make us effective at solving our customers' problems.

We practice what we preach:

• Anti-chaos: We eliminate organizational complexity that doesn't add value

• Execution-first: We prioritize getting things done over looking busy

• Human-centered: We remember that behind every metric is a person trying to do good work

• Clarity over confusion: We communicate directly and honestly, internally and externally

This alignment between our values and our operations isn't coincidence—it's intentional. You can't credibly help other companies eliminate marketing chaos if your own company operates in chaos. You can't build tools that amplify human creativity if you've created a workplace that crushes it.

Building for the Long Game

The companies that won Inc.'s Best Workplaces award aren't the ones optimizing for quarterly performance reviews. They're the ones building sustainable cultures that attract and retain exceptional talent over years, not months.

This matters more than most founders realize. In a world where everyone has access to the same AI tools, the same cloud infrastructure, and the same growth playbooks, your only sustainable competitive advantage is the quality of thinking and execution that your team brings to problems.

Great people don't want to work at companies that burn them out, micromanage their every decision, or treat them like interchangeable resources. They want to work at places where their contributions matter, where they can grow, and where they can be proud of what they're building.

This recognition tells the world that Averi is that kind of place. It signals to potential team members that we're serious about creating an environment where exceptional work can happen. It validates our belief that you can build a high-performance culture without sacrificing the things that make work humane.

The Real Test

But here's the thing about workplace culture: it's not about the awards you win—it's about the daily experience of the people who work with you. The real test isn't whether Inc. recognizes us. The real test is whether our team would recommend working here to someone they care about.

The fact that they consistently do tells us we're on the right track.

Inc.'s Best Workplaces recognition is gratifying, but it's not the goal. The goal is building a company where exceptional people can do exceptional work—the kind of work that actually moves the needle for our customers and makes the marketing world a little less chaotic.

That's what great workplaces do: they don't just make work tolerable—they make work meaningful.

Why This Matters for Our Customers

Our workplace culture isn't just internal good news—it directly impacts the value we deliver to customers. When your team isn't burned out, distracted by office politics, or constrained by bureaucratic processes, they can focus entirely on solving customer problems.

The same principles that make Averi a great place to work make us more effective at helping our customers:

• Clarity over chaos means we communicate simply and execute efficiently

• Human-centered approach means we understand that marketing problems are people problems

• Execution-first mindset means we help customers get things done, not just strategize endlessly

• Anti-bureaucracy stance means we move fast when customers need solutions

Companies with strong workplace cultures deliver better customer experiences because they're not wasting energy on internal dysfunction. Every hour we don't spend on pointless meetings or managing organizational chaos is an hour we can spend making our platform better for the marketers who depend on it.

What's Next

Inc.'s Best Workplaces recognition is a milestone, not a destination.

As we grow (and we are growing, fast) we're committed to maintaining the culture that got us here while evolving it to serve an expanding team.

That means:

• Continuing to hire people who share our values, not just our skills

• Maintaining direct communication as we scale beyond startup size

• Preserving the autonomy and trust that make fast execution possible

• Staying focused on outcomes rather than activities

• Building systems that support creativity rather than constrain it

Most importantly, it means staying true to the principle that drove us to build Averi in the first place: work should amplify human potential, not diminish it.

Whether that's the AI tools we build for marketers or the workplace culture we create for our team.

The Bigger Picture

This recognition comes at a time when the relationship between AI and human work is being redefined across every industry. Too many companies are using AI as an excuse to devalue human contributions or create more extractive workplace cultures.

We're proving the opposite is possible: AI and human creativity can work together to create better outcomes for everyone—customers, employees, and the companies themselves.

Being named to Inc.'s Best Workplaces list validates this approach and gives us a platform to demonstrate that the future of work doesn't have to be dystopian. It can be more humane, more creative, and more effective than what came before.

That's the kind of future we're building at Averi.

Not just through our product, but through how we work together every day.

See the full list here: https://www.inc.com/best-workplaces