Cheryl Ng, Founder
Without going into detail about companies that make money from the vicious spreading of negativity (creating an echo-chamber of ideas to create radicalized extreme viewpoints, destroying livelihoods in an effort to be “newsworthy”), or from the harvesting of life (whether killing animals for meat or killing trees for wood), there was a point in my life where it seemed to me that you needed to be an asshole in order to succeed in life or in business.
This was incredibly depressing.
I needed to prove, if only for my own sanity, that you don’t have to be an asshole in order to get ahead.
That is why Lemi has been built as an entirely positive space.
On Lemi, there are 3 types of posts. Recommendations, Wishlists, and Memories. There’s no point in bitching. You won’t have much of an audience. If you have nothing good to say, we’d rather you say nothing at all. Yes, we recognize that businesses make mistakes, but we also believe in giving them the opportunity to learn, evolve, and improve. Life is hard enough without one disgruntled customer dragging an entire average down with an angry one-star rating. Besides, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
We don’t bother with star ratings. The grading system never takes into account the things that matter, like the effort and risk it takes to be creative, or think and do something different. Part of the challenge in today’s social media world is the fear of failure. Creativity and problem solving is built upon failure. In order to offer something totally unique, you have to be willing to try.
A perfect example is in the food industry. Most of the top restaurants offer the same style of dishes, in the same sorts of settings, presented in a certain style on our plates. It’s got to be “Instagrammable”. Well frankly some of the best foods I’ve ever tasted are not Instagrammable at all, and many of the world’s foods were made accidentally. Would those chefs have been willing to try something totally different and odd if their one failure could cause the detriment of their entire restaurant’s livelihood? Laying off all your friends (your staff), losing all the investment it costs to build and set up the restaurant, all that effort to get all those licenses just wasted and for nothing at the end… all because you tried something different?
So no, I don’t believe in putting people down just because they tried something and failed. That’s just rubbish.
Instead, Lemi just focuses on positive recommendations. It doesn’t matter how small you are, or how big your marketing budget or expertise is. If your business is awesome, and if enough people recommend it, we’ll help you spread the word by broadcasting those authentic recommendations about you, for free.
So move over, assholes. Your cycle of negativity stops here.