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The Home of Culture Research: The Business of Culture I 2026 I Download Now
Why Rainforest Built Its Culture Around Trust First
I DEEP DIVE INSIDER PROFILES
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Rainforest is building a company where people are expected to make good decisions, speak openly and stay close to the software platforms they serve.
Rainforest helps software companies embed payments directly into their products without taking on the full operational burden of becoming payment facilitators themselves.
Built specifically for vertical software platforms, the company provides white-label payments infrastructure that can sit inside a customer’s existing product. Its technology covers areas such as payments, reporting and merchant onboarding, while Rainforest also handles the risk and compliance work that sits behind those services.
The company was founded by CEO Joshua Silver, who had already spent more than a decade working in payments before starting Rainforest. His experience included running a healthcare payments processing business and advising companies on payment strategy, giving the founding team first-hand experience of the problems software platforms face when they try to build payments into their products.
Rainforest grew from the idea of creating the product they had wanted themselves.
That mission is becoming increasingly relevant as more payments move through software rather than traditional banking channels. Rainforest helps software platforms generate revenue from payments while retaining control over the customer experience, without having to build the underlying infrastructure from scratch.
Inside the company, the cultural belief is just as clear: people should be trusted to make decisions, expected to act with integrity and comfortable saying when something is not working.
Rainforest does not treat trust as something that comes only after years at the company. People are given ownership early and are expected to use judgement rather than wait for every decision to move upwards. The company wants employees to feel that their work matters and that they have enough context to act on it.
Integrity sits underneath that approach. Rainforest’s view is that people should do the right thing even when it is inconvenient, and that colleagues should be able to rely on one another when the work gets difficult.
That matters in payments, where decisions can carry consequences for both customers and merchants. Employees need enough freedom to move quickly, but also enough care to understand when speed is not the most important thing.
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The company reinforces that sense of ownership across different functions. Engineers are expected to solve problems rather than simply complete assigned work. The same principle applies in risk and customer success, where employees are given room to make calls based on the situation in front of them.
Leaders stay close enough to support that work without removing the responsibility from the person doing it. The way Rainforest handles problems is one of the clearest expressions of the culture.
When something goes wrong, the focus moves quickly towards what needs to happen next. A software defect or missed handoff is treated as a problem to solve rather than an opportunity to assign blame. That makes it easier for people to surface issues early, because acknowledging a mistake does not automatically turn into a defensive exercise.
The company has worked deliberately to make that kind of openness normal.
Feedback is expected to move in both directions, and teams are encouraged to talk honestly about what is working as well as what needs attention. The aim is to create an environment where people can raise concerns before they become bigger problems.
Recognition is handled with the same immediacy.
Rainforest has a dedicated #rainforest-stars Slack channel where employees call out work they have appreciated from colleagues. The recognition happens in real time, often around a specific contribution that helped a customer or moved a piece of work forward.
That gives employees a visible way to understand which behaviours are valued without waiting for an annual review or formal recognition cycle. Hiring is also closely tied to the way Rainforest wants people to work once they arrive.
The company looks beyond experience on paper and spends time understanding how candidates make decisions in real situations. A large proportion of hiring comes through employee referrals, which has helped Rainforest bring in people who already have some understanding of how the company operates.
The expectation is not that new hires arrive knowing everything.
Rainforest is still an early-stage business, and the problems it faces are constantly changing. People need to be comfortable learning quickly and changing their view when new information appears. Deep experience is useful, but only if it can sit alongside the willingness to keep learning.
Onboarding is designed to give new employees enough understanding to start contributing quickly, while mentorship from experienced leaders helps people build confidence as their responsibilities grow. Employees are expected to stretch beyond what they already know rather than stay inside a narrow version of their role.
The company’s values are reflected throughout that way of working.
“Compete Together” reinforces the expectation that people push for strong outcomes without turning colleagues into rivals. “Ruthlessly Simplify” shows up in the product as much as the internal operation, particularly in a part of financial infrastructure that can become complicated very quickly.
The common thread is making it easier for people to understand what matters and take action. Rainforest’s customers are software platforms trying to make payments part of their own products. Those customers often need help navigating an area that is unfamiliar and heavily regulated, so Rainforest positions itself as a partner rather than simply a technology provider.
That same mindset affects the workplace. Employees are expected to share what they know, help others understand the problem and contribute to the quality of the wider outcome rather than protect knowledge within their own area.
As Rainforest grows, maintaining that level of trust will become more complicated. More people naturally creates more process, and more process can create distance between an individual employee and the decision in front of them.