June 18, 2025 • 54 mins
What happens when your company outgrows the culture that once defined it?
In this episode of the MarsBased Podcast, Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit sits down with Greg from TextExpander to discuss how growing to 30+ employees forced them to revisit their values, communication style, and internal training.
Greg explains how to recognize the right moment to redefine your company culture and why they decided to introduce internal training programs to support that shift. He shares how seemingly simple tools, like their cultural mantra “Be Obvious”, played a powerful role in improving team communication. The conversation also explores how remote companies can foster stronger ownership and alignment across teams, and what actually makes a training program worth the investment.
Greg also opens up about how they involved the entire team in redefining values, brought in external coaches to support the process, and measured the cultural impact over time. Skipping this process, he says, could have been their most expensive mistake.
Whether you're scaling a remote team or wondering how to make culture actionable, not just aspirational, this episode is packed with real talk and practical insights.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody and welcome to Life on Mars.
I'm Alex, CEO and founder ofMarsBase, and in this episode we
bring you Greg Scown,co-founder of TextExpander,
who's been previously on thepodcast a few episodes ago, who
was also a startup brand in oneof our very last events ever,
and this time around we invitehim over to discuss redefining
(00:20):
company culture how they did itat TextExpander, but more so
because we are doing it rightnow on Marspace as 30 people.
Right now we are redefining,we're fine-tuning our company
culture because we believe thisis a turning point for the
company.
And he reached out to me whenhe read an issue of my
newsletter when I was talkingabout this, and said like look,
(00:42):
let's have this conversation onthe podcast.
I don't want to do it first inperson and then repeat it again
on a podcast episode, becausemost of the times it doesn't
like have the same feeling and Iwas going to regret it.
So I said, like let's just havethis conversation on an episode
.
Let's record it the first time.
(01:02):
We have it to be more organic,more natural.
So this is an experiment.
I hope you like it.
I think it came out really good.
So, without further ado, let'sjump right into this episode.
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Welcome, Greg.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Thank you for having me Good morning.
Good morning, we have a bankholiday here, yet we decided to
record this episode.
Thank you for reaching out tothat newsletter I sent, which
you kindly replied to, and Isaid look, I want to have this
conversation.
I sure do, but it's got to beon a podcast episode, because
(01:44):
far too often lately I regrethaving certain conversations
that should have been a podcastepisode and then I'm like God
damn it, this would have made avery good episode and you have
them for a second time.
They're not nearly as good, andso this time we're doing it.
How are you feeling about it?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I'm feeling great.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Want to give some context.
I launched this personalnewsletter six months ago.
It's called Founder to Founderand you're one of the biggest
fans of the newsletter.
I should add Religiously.
Every second newsletter you'reanswering with your thoughts,
which I'm very grateful for andthat gives me, you know, more
(02:28):
motivation to keep writing.
And the other day I was at aSeed Rocket event with all the
mentors of Seed Rocket and wehad the usual kind of
conversations we have with ourfounders, and one of them is hey
, you know, we had this culturalproblem when we hit a certain
amount of scale and,coincidentally, I was having
these thoughts because at MarsSpace we just hit 30 people and
(02:50):
I'm like well, I think ourculture made it this far and we
need to redefine it.
And I wrote this issue of thenewsletter and you answer with a
few thoughts that, if you wantto comment on them, we can build
up from there.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Sure.
So I did answer with somethoughts and I think that the
main thought was that aroundthis size we did something at
Texas Mentor that was reallyhelpful and that was we engaged
a fellow who did communicationclasses and so we actually had
the entire company docommunication classes.
(03:26):
And if I had not done that, orif we had not done that, I think
that we would have been a farworse company.
I mean, we were all remote Atthe time.
We had those classes, we were35 people and they gave us a
common language and they gave ussome super shortcuts.
So I think my favorite amongthe shortcuts is be obvious, and
(03:52):
it's a really, really, reallyshort phrase, but the notion is
that essentially, anytime thatyou're communicating, it's okay
to say more and you will not bepenalized for essentially going
over additional detail or sayingsomething in extra time so that
everyone that you'recommunicating with is on the
same page.
And it even gave us a shorthandto say I am being obvious and
(04:22):
you know barrel on.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
So you know, we had this trick and a couple of
others, and I think that made alot of difference Up until then.
What was the company called?
What was the company called?
Yeah, so we've got to go backin history a little bit.
So in 2013,.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
We were 10 people.
We were 10 people.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And we got together for the first time all in person
, at Macworld, san Francisco.
Literally prior to that, we hadnever all been in the same room
at the same time and then, in2016,.
We did the pivot to the textexpander at SAS.
And in 2017, we had 12 peopleand we kind of passed the pivot.
And we kind of passed the pivotand Maya, who was the product
(04:57):
manager for text expander, saidokay, philip and Greg, if we
don't define our culture andhire our culture, then we aren't
going to be a company that Iwant to work at in the not too
distant future, and we werebowled over a bit.
We were incredibly grateful forher feedback, but also like oh.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
God.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
We seriously have work to do.
This is very, very important.
This is very, very important.
So we did, so we put together alist.
So we put together a list ofthings new hires to have, new
hires to have qualities and umwe came up with six.
We came up with we wanted to behonest.
We wanted to be honest,personable, positive, smart and
reliable.
(05:37):
Smart and reliable.
The things that were the thingswe set to actually we set to
actually building that into thehiring process, building that
into the hiring process.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
And essentially the people who interviewed someone
graded them on thosecharacteristics.
And so if we had somebody whointerviewed, and even if they
were the most amazing, candidatefor the job, but they were not
personable or they talked abouthow disorganized they were and
(06:06):
how they had a lot of troublewith that.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
That was kind of an immediate no.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That was kind of an immediate no.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
No offense to the person involved, but in terms of
building a culture, in terms ofcollecting people who matched
what we needed that wassomething that we started to do.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
That was something that we started to do.
It's more or less around thesize of people that they say
company culture is defined bythe first 10 hires.
I disagree a little bit.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
In our case, that might be confirmation bias.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Confirmation bias, of course, but in our case our
company culture was defined fromthe get-go as something very
intentional by my co-foundersand I and we thought look, it's
going to be us and we drawinspiration from companies like
Pocket Buffer and companies likethat, which, at the time, for
an agency, didn't really makemuch sense.
(06:59):
It was kind of like a startup-ything to do in Spain, but we
were always set out to do.
But we were always set out todo for me right, things for me
right.
Uh, we decided to define acompany culture that was not
great, good, not great, but itworked for us.
And then hires, the first 10hires, I don't think they really
find it.
Further, define it further.
We fine-tune it we fine-tune itdown the line, down the line,
(07:22):
maybe in year three or somethinglike year four, something like
that.
Because, look, english isn't ournative language, and so maybe
we had some things that wereexplicitly stated very obviously
, or a couple of them wereredundant.
We had stuff like less is more,quality over quantity, remote
(07:46):
first optimize for remote, giveback to the community and stuff
like that.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
We had way too many items, and then we decided to
shorten that list a little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I don't think.
But I don't think, Not becauseof them right.
Not because of them right.
I don't want to throw anybodyunder the bus.
I don't think our hires, Idon't think our hires come true
to the company culture.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Maybe because we actually didn't talk that openly
about the company culture wedid only talk about a couple of
items which were beingspecialized against being a
generalist specifically, workingin European rail and not doing
all of the other technologies.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
The other one is less is more, so simply respect them
.
But the rest they sort of likethey were floating around the
company in the presentations onthe website.
I think they were not even onthe website.
We didn't do a great job.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Some of these things permeated into the company
culture.
Now that we are 30, we're likefirst.
I realize a couple of things.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
First I realize a couple of things.
First, company culture is noton the website.
What the fuck?
The second is I'm pretty surenobody from our employees could
recite the company culture frommemory, and I think that's my
fault.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So, given that we have reached this point and
we're going to have thisconversation about hey, what
should we do with companyculture?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
It's very good that you shared that.
It's very good that you sharedthat.
It's more or less coincideswith initial company culture,
initial company culture.
Redefine or establish or cementthat by size 10 and then 30 and
then 30.
Something else in your case was35.
Um, like how many years?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
why, like how many years?
Speaker 2 (09:37):
yeah well, so we should, we should back up.
So we also did something.
We also did something at about.
So in 2019, in 2019, we had our, we called it our first annual
offsite.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Of course, 2020 was COVID, and so it proved not to
be right away, but at any rate,uh, but we had everybody
together, we had everybodyoutside of denver.
We were outside and uh, and wehad the qualities for new hires,
the qualities for new hiresthat we had created people on
but not talked about much and sowe essentially did a survey of
(10:13):
everyone talking with thosevalues, sort of in the
background, trying to see, okay,can we distill this further so
that, as you said, so thateveryone knows it, so it's easy
to remember.
You wanted everyone in thecompany to know this is it, and
so we're hoping to get it downto a few fewer items and the
(10:35):
result of that wasaccountability, passion for the
customer, integrity and teamwork.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
So those are the four .
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Everyone in the company knows them integrity and
teamwork.
So those are the four.
Everyone in the company knowsthem.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Everyone in the company knows them.
Philip took to having a slideat the end of every monthly
company meeting with those fourthings on it and reiterating
them every month.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean like seriously , we took it maybe to the
extreme, but we really, reallywanted to ensure that everybody
knew that this is where we werecoming from and that if you were
making a decision, these couldguide your decision.
These could guide your decision.
So you're making a decisionthat was hostile to the customer
.
Hostile to the customer, that'snot a good decision.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
That's just by definition.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Just by definition, if you, if you know were I don't
know were freezing out, whenyour teammates freezing out,
when you're tired because youknow I pause and think it's like
, oh jeez.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You might pause and think they have to make time
Because that's part of teamwork.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Because that's part of teamwork.
So that was one thing that wedid in the middle.
It sounds like maybe whereyou're at, maybe where you're at
.
This is a good exercise becauseyou've got sort of your list of
things that you've beenadvertising on your website.
You've been advertising on yourwebsite In your documents and
in your description of thecompany you have pieces of this,
(11:47):
I think, pieces of this, Ithink.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
And so involving the whole team in crafting where
you're at and where you're atand where you might go might be
a helpful exercise.
How much do you think this?
is affected by both of ourcompanies being remote, because
one of the challenges of beingremote companies is that the
(12:11):
bonding between the teammatestakes more time.
The company culture is sort ofloser and I don't think we have
experienced any singulardifficulty by this fact.
But I think that we could bemore cohesive as a team, as a
company culture, if we were notremote.
(12:32):
But that's not going to happenanytime soon.
Hence my question Did you thinkthat something dawned on you?
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Dawned on you Like oh , yeah, this happens because
we're remote, yeah, definitely.
We felt that establishingvalues was very important.
That's something that on youlike, on you like, oh, yeah,
that this happens because we'reyeah, no, definitely, and we
felt that it's not important andthat's a little bit of a
company.
And then the following step ofthe following communication
classes doing communicationclasses.
It was necessary.
It was necessary as we gotbigger.
One other thing occurred in themiddle.
One other thing occurred in themiddle, which is Maya again,
(13:03):
huge credit to her said okay, abunch of the people who are
joining the company are greatpeople and match our values, but
they have come to us from toxicenvironments.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
They were not at a company that lived these values.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
They were in conflict with their peers or their
bosses.
They were in conflict withtheir peers or their bosses.
And one of the reasons thatthey chose us is that their
personality fit the values butnot their lived work experience,
and so this actually really wasthe seed to get into the
communication classes forexample in a prior company.
(13:48):
If someone asked a question,then they might appear
incompetent, you know, at Smileand then TaxExpander.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
If someone asked a question, that was a question
and worthy of an answer.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Always, and so even sort of moral lines of when in
doubt, ask when in doubt ask,don't just wait.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Don't, don't, don't, and so it was important, and so
it was important to have talk toeach other, talk to each other,
and we managed to manage it asit worked, but to talk to each
other, about to each other abouthow these things work, how
these things work, how they workout, how they work our
environment, in our environment,how that might be a little
(14:23):
different, how that might be alittle different than what they
had experienced prior it is agood point and it is a good
point, and don't I?
I don't think we want to godown the rabbit.
We want to go down the rabbitculture, feet versus culture at
that, because I think thatthat's.
That's also like a good debate,to have maybe another episode
(14:43):
when we are certainly when weare evaluating candidates I know
first we, I you know first we.
We do have a screening processin which we see persons.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
This person, hasn't read the actual job description
right this is it.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Oh, we only hire in these locations, or you have to
have this.
And then they submit something.
Maybe they say something elsein the position.
They submit a frontendapplication.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
It's like fuck If he or she doesn't read the job
description she or he will notbe reading the actual, like the
feature descriptions on linearright, on geo, on Trello,
whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I think that being a good reader is that something.
But also, you know, we At acertain point we realized that
we're only hiring the same kindof people.
And I don't know how thatcontributes to expanding the
diversity of your company, andit's very easy to fall prey to
(15:42):
the.
This can profile work for us inthe past.
Let's hire him or her againinstead of trying something else
, but I think that's somethingdifferent.
That's something different andentirely A little bit off topic
of what I wanted to cover heretoday.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I wanted to go deeper maybe into this process
bringing somebody external tothe company.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Consultant, slash coach, whatever you want to call
it.
Because for me, the firstreaction to this I'm always very
skeptical of consultant coachesor coaches, because I think
that most of them they have avery bad reputation because a
large portion of these peoplethey just do an okay job or a
(16:31):
subpar job and they give badreputation to the rest.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
It's kind of like an agile coach.
It's kind of like an agilecoach.
I'm pretty sure there'ssomebody who's a great agile
coach, and brings a lot of time.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
All of the agile coaches I've met in my entire
life Potion, right, all of the Ishall coaches I've met in my
entire life right, so ocean,right, or you know, account
lawyers, account notaries,notaries and stuff.
They don't have the best, theydon't have the best reputation
and not a place in their job.
It's not a place their job justbecause a lot of people just do
a mediocre job and that kind oflike permeates into so I'm very
(17:01):
, I'm very skeptical about this,but I'm open to the idea.
Can you give some details to?
How did you get in touch withthis person?
What was the process?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
like Cost Time scales of the project.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, and I think I can even tie the two together,
which was that we started tryingto do something different and
we landed doing something thatworked out well so what we
started with was at that sameoffsite in.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Denver we did like a personality profile.
It wasn't Myers-Briggs, it wassome other thing.
So we all ran a book togetherthat had it was neither, it was
something else.
It wasn't Myers-Briggs, it wassome other thing.
So we all read a book together.
So we all read a book togetherthat had this the Enneagram.
The Enneagram.
It was neither, it wassomething else, but it's the
same thing else.
And so there were sevencategories that people could
fall into.
People could fall into.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
And there was a whole language around it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
There was a whole language around it.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
It was interesting we brought in Philip's former CEO
and his wife, who is a VP ofsales somewhere came in and
helped with this, because it'shelpful to have people who are
not Philip and I leading theworkshop, so that we would be
part of the workshop.
And we did it as you said.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I think 18 of us or 17 of us wound up in the same
group pretty much every time,occasionally, we were the
outlier, but really, as you said, we pretty much hired people
that were, I suppose, of similarpersonalities.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So we decided that fixing that may not have been
our best paper.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We had done this for a reason, and it was working for
us, so it was not necessarilythat we go done this, that we
probably had done this for areason, and it was working for
us, so it was not necessarilyurgent that we go change that
what we found was more urgentwas that we ensured that
everyone we did have wascommunicating well and the other
thing that forced that is thatover the following year we grew
(19:03):
from 20 to 35 people to put 15people on board.
We did onboarding for all thepeople.
We should probably talk aboutthat later, but that's something
that's important and then werealized we really needed
communication skills, and so wecast around so just as you do
for your lawyer or youraccountant or your accountant.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
You ask the people that you know who do they know,
who are experts in the field andwho are good.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And so that's how we found Aaron, and he has works.
He's an expert in his field.
He's an expert in his field.
He's got track record.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
He's got track record .
Speaker 1 (19:40):
We talked to people, he had come into to this, who
are four classes of a similarsize.
Hey, how did this go?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
for you.
Hey, how did this go for you?
Speaker 1 (19:48):
and and that was essentially the process, that
was essentially.
That is the expert vetting theexpert the other thing was we
structured the other thing waswe structured so ultimately,
over the course of the year, wespent the course of a year, we
spent five figures expenditurefor the company.
But we started with a pilot aclass that was maybe, I think,
(20:14):
three hours, with everyone inthe company to do one skill.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And we wanted to see how that went.
We wanted to see how that went.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
And the deal, if I recall correctly me I don't
remember exactly, I don'tremember I think the deal was
that we got.
I think the deal was that wegot to do the one that we didn't
have an obligation, but that wedidn't have an obligation to
follow here, uh.
However, at the outset when weestablished the pilot when we
established the pilot, we alsoestablished the price for the
right.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So it was a it was.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It was a paid trial, it was a paid trial it was a
paid trial, but it was, it was.
We liked that it was a paidtrial, that it was a paid trial,
that was a good business model,in our opinion, for someone who
was doing this, for someone whowas doing this.
Don't give it away for free.
It doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Give us one skill.
Give us one skill For areasonable price A reasonable.
Give us one skill for areasonable price, followed by a
whole program that ultimatelyturned out to be worth doing.
How much time did you have toallocate for that?
As a former employee of bigcompanies, where I perceive that
(21:23):
we were spending maybe notenough time in soft skills
training.
Yet when we were doingtrainings they were pretty
useless Basic stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Basic stuff.
Like email security orPowerPoint presentations Basic,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Microsoft Office and stuff like that I think my
perception of these.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
HR-led programs were that they were too generalist.
I'm speaking when I was atDeloitte and other companies in
our size.
It's okay.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The perception from the employees most of the time
is that, wow, this is rubbish tome because it doesn't apply to
me.
Therefore, wasting time andtherefore when a new training,
you're always looking at itbecause it's like, oh yeah,
another hr and uh, maybe thatone is, and uh, maybe that one
is interesting, but yourbarriers are up, right, and so,
(22:23):
um, as a founder now, as afounder now, I'm like, should I
be pushing these kind of thingsto my people when I never like
them?
I never enjoyed them.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I never thought they were useful, but, but maybe this
time there will be more thoughtthrough because it's a smaller
group of people.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Smaller group of people.
It's very specific to what wedo.
It's very specific to what wedo.
We don't have nearly therotation that these big
companies have, so maybe this issomething that we could package
and just put something veryinteresting for the company.
Yeah, I understand from theperspective of developers like,
oh yeah, yeah, another training,oh yeah, another training, even
if it's the first one we do atMarksMate.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Oh, no trainings.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Everyone joined this company to do freaking trainings
.
The only thing I want to do isdevelop.
So, as a founder, how did youapproach this?
Sure, I think we approached itwith honesty.
We approached it with honesty,so we started with.
This is with a commonperception of this type of thing
.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
And we said we, as the founders, are accountable.
If we do this three-hour pilotand everyone hates it, or we
have a ton of negative feedbackor we got nothing out of it it's
over, it's done, it's over, noproblem.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
That said, we want the benefit of the doubt from
you, please.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
We want you to do this wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
We want you to do this wholeheartedly and see if
we, collectively, can getsomething out of it.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
We, collectively, can get something out of it and if
so, then yeah, we'd like you onboard.
For the rest, we'd like you onboard for the rest If we're
getting something out of it, ifwe're getting something out of
it.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
This is going to be worth it, and I think that it
didn't hurt to say.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It didn't hurt to say we're not out to.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
We're not out to essentially pad the calendar
essentially pad the calendarwith trainings or additional
requirements, additionalrequirements we're out to solve
a specific problem a lot oftimes, in a lot of times, in a
company of 35 people, wires getcrossed.
Wires get crossed fail tocommunicate as well as they'll
communicate as well as they,possibly not because they're bad
, not because they're bad people, not because they're not good
(24:24):
at their job, not because of anyparticular fault, of their own
particular fault, butcollectively, but collectively
we didn't have the tools that weneeded we had identified
someone who we had identifiedsomeone who could help us build
those tools and how much timedid you and how much time did
you?
And how much time did you whenyou were?
Speaker 1 (24:45):
The first trial period right that you said it
was a three-hour session, andthen you decided that you wanted
to come in for the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
How much time did you have to allocate and who was
involved in each part?
Were you all involved?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
at the same time.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
So it was something like two-hour sessions on every
Friday.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
The whole team gets there.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
And how did that affect the operability of the
company?
Because then it's like oh,everybody's involved in this,
everybody's involved in this, orto a certain part of people,
how do?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
you compensate for this from the business
perspective.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, now defaulting.
My memory may be unhelpful tothis, but if I remember
correctly, I think it wasroughly quarterly.
I think it was roughlyquarterly.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
And it was roughly four to six hours, and it was
roughly four to six hours and itwas the whole team, and it was
the whole team.
So really we spent a day, aquarter, we spent a day, a
quarter, a day.
And then we did another thingwhich was for the management, so
a smaller group of people,maybe six to eight of us.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
We did an additional, I believe also quarterly thing
where this was okay, so you'remanaging.
How do you help people align onthis?
So if you encounter an instancewhere someone's not
communicating well and it'sobvious to you and maybe obvious
(26:05):
to people around them how doyou help them do better?
Essentially, a combination ofleading through example and for
lack of a better term defectresolution, but once a day per
quarter doesn't seem like verymuch to me.
It could be a day off or acompany retreat, something like
(26:26):
that.
Customers are largelyunaffected.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
It doesn't really affect that much the operations
of the company.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
It doesn't break into things.
It's not like having one dayper week during the six-week
period.
Wow, that wouldn't be effective.
Let's begin with 20% reductionof the production time.
Right, yeah, production time,right, and also in your case,
you're a.
Saas right.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
So I don't know how that, like it's different from
us.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
It's different from us because we build per hour.
So therefore, every moment thatwe don't work, maybe in a size
of like nothing to break, yourcustomer still pays.
Did you get?
Speaker 1 (27:02):
together for this, or was?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
it done remotely.
This all occurred during COVID,so we really didn't have an
option to get together, but itwould have been remote or not.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
That said, we might have done it all in the
marketplace.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
We would have had a follow-up altogether at our
second annual, had there been asecond annual, because that
would have been a nice in-personcomponent that matched the
program that we were doing.
But I don't think we would havedone any more than that in
person, because it's funny.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Because it's funny Not in your case, not in your
case.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Not in your case, but companies trying to solve the
complications.
You know the complicationsderived from being remote, doing
this kind of course remotely, Idon't think it really helps.
I understand that.
But I understand that maybethis is the way to approach it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
But maybe the real difficulty here is for the
leader of the training, sayinghey, you have to be really
connected to this.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
You have to be wired because otherwise you're
disconnected from this, we'renot solving anything and the
results will not get him.
How did you measure the impactfrom this?
Was there some sort of KPIsthere, some sort of like kpi's?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
agreed upon, or like what, what?
What was the agreement like?
What was the agreement like?
And?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I mean we did a combination of post, of post
training, surveys, trainingsurveys to gauge people's
satisfaction with the survey butalso to gauge, but also I think
one of the surveys.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I think one of the surveys.
Can you give an example whereyou used one of the things you
learned?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
in your day-to-day.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
To our delight, people gave multiple examples.
People gave multiple examples.
Right, I mean, I think we gotone survey with zero examples
and 34 surveys with at least oneand 20 surveys with two or more
, and so that was a good hint ofokay, this is working, and we
were worried about that.
We were worried about that.
(29:07):
We were like, okay, we're goingto ask this and nobody's going
to write anything, then what arewe going to do?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
But it turned out that asking fell into the
category of be obvious, askingfell into the category of be
obvious, and answering workedreally well and told us what we
needed, so we didn't really haveto work a lot harder at
figuring out whether it workedor not.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
And we figured if we had to work hard to figure out
whether it worked or not?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
then it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
That's actually a good point.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
That's actually a good point.
That's actually a good point.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's actually a good point.
Also, I have to think thatmaybe you have to consider that
you probably have, or you dothem half rotation.
You do them half rotation, if Iremember correctly, in your
company, like they were stayingfor long.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I don't know how that affected.
I don't know how that affectedHaving people with long tenures
at the company they are usuallynot as engaged as people who
have been recently hired thatthey just want to display extra
motivation.
They want to prove themselves.
They want to always beresponsible.
People will be like 70 yearsinto a company like, yeah, they
(30:13):
do a great job, but they usuallydisengage from certain
activities because they're likeoh yeah, I've seen this before,
I haven't done it for a year, itdoesn't really matter, like.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
But they usually disengage from certain
activities because they're like,oh yeah, I've seen this before,
I haven't done it for a year.
Like, for instance, we reallymatter like, for instance, on
friday.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
On fridays, every week, we send an internal poll
asking for people to share thehighlights.
It can be personal, it can bework, it can be personal, it can
be both.
And, uh, we see that somepeople are very consistent with
this.
They have been doing this forseven years, something like that
.
Other people, especially likethe most senior people in the
company yeah, like I'm too busy,yeah, whatever, like I'm too
busy to do other stuff, or maybe, you know, for another reason
(30:48):
they're disengaged with this.
So therefore, the problem ontothe new one hires, because
they're saying like oh, thesepeople don't do it right, then
why should I right?
Did you see any differencebetween?
Did you see any differencebetween these people with longer
tenures and those recentlyhired?
Speaker 1 (31:02):
in this kind of process.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
I think what we asked of the people who had the
longer tenures was for them toserve as the example to the
other folks, because if they did, their lives would be better,
and if they didn't, their liveswould effectively be worse.
They knew by the time that wewere doing this how important it
(31:24):
was, so it wasn't that hard toget them engaged.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Also to Aaron's credit.
He is the master of the Zoombreakout room.
I mean, I've never seen Zoombreakout rooms used to greater
effect and also he was perfectlycomfortable using and requiring
online tools.
So we were doing job booms andwe were doing things in the
(31:51):
breakout rooms using tools thatwork well for remote companies.
So I think that engagementwasn't difficult, because
leading by example was importantand teamwork was important, and
then I also think that hisexpertise in engaging people
just in general was infectious.
(32:13):
It worked well for anyone who'dbeen around for a long time I
think he was used to going intoan organization where there were
veterans and there were newpeople.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
And bridging.
That was important.
And how about the language?
Because as a company you werepromoted.
You had people all over theglobe for those who were
spanning nine time zones.
I remember you saying, and sotherefore I'm assuming you were
hiring people with pristine.
English skills right.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Otherwise, there's a certain friction involved in the
difference of levels in thelanguage, especially when you
know there's a modern languagein the company.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And then you want to centralize everything there,
right, in our case, we haveEnglish first, but the reality
is like everybody lives in Spainor Portugal, so therefore it's
kind of like a lot of Spanishand Portuguese guys struggling
sometimes with the I.
You can speak Spanish, but atthe same time you know
everything is in English.
But if we were to conduct thesekind of sessions, with somebody
(33:14):
like Aaron, we would do it inEnglish.
I'm assuming we're not a lot ofpeople.
We have a fraction of ourpeople who sing English not the
best, so I think there would besome language friction there.
Did you have any problems withthese or with the time zones or
how these people are adapted tothese?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah, I think the time zones were the trickiest
because getting everyone tooverlap, so we had one person
who was in Dubai and shedutifully did this from.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I think it was like 10 pm to 2 am and we were
incredibly grateful.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
No, we primed this.
We'd like to work with you.
We're going to work with you ondates and times.
We don't want this to ruin yourlife, but would you indulge us?
And she was game.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
In the end.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
We checked in with her.
We checked in with her.
We're like okay, you made thisgreat sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
This was a good pitch for the pilot.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
You made the sacrifice once.
We're going to ask it of youfour more times.
Is this okay?
Did this work for you?
Did this work for you?
Did this work for you?
And she actually was thrownhurt to some place else.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
There were other options for how to deal with
this.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
She said, no, it wasn't that hard to change my
schedule because I knew it wascoming.
I was completely engaged and infact we did ask people who, in
your session, felt the mostengaged and she got some pretty
good thumbs up from hercolleagues.
Not easy at 10 pm.
Not easy at 10 pm.
No, no, I realize, no, no, Irealize.
So time zones was a thing, sotime zones was a thing.
(34:49):
And then of our people at thetime so 35, probably five were
not native English speakers butall had significant English
ability.
We didn't really see thathappening, but I think it would
be something that you couldaddress directly with whoever
would be interested in doingthis with you.
This is the composition of ourteam.
(35:14):
We should hit this directly onthe head instead of pretending
it doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And that might be part of the pilot.
That might be part of the pilot.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
That might be part of the pilot.
Let's see.
Okay, let's see, and if not,then let's try and find somebody
in Spain who's going to conductthis in Spanish, your
Portuguese folks are kind of outof luck Exactly, unless we give
them a couple beers.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Because then Spanish sounds like beer Exactly, Unless
we give them a couple beers orrefined company culture is a
soft way of admitting that itwasn't solid enough, At least in
(36:02):
our case.
Maybe I'm projecting here, butin my case it's like well, maybe
we didn't do the best job or ithasn't really adapted to how
the company has changed In part.
It's because the company now is11 years old, and the last time
we put some touches on thecompany culture was 70 years ago
.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
We've undergone the COVID crisis, the 2022 tech
meltdown crisis, other marketchanges, technology changes,
team changes, even like we havenew business lines and whatnot,
we're bigger as a company.
Right In the meantime, weadopted ASIC and then we
reverted it because it didn'twork.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
So we've undergone several changes and I think that
right now is why are we tryingto fix company culture when we
should be trying to fix theunderlying problems instead?
I don't know if that's a sharedconcern.
Is that something that youidentified as?
Speaker 1 (36:58):
well, or maybe I'm just projecting here.
I think in our case we saw itcoming and we're again kind of
grateful to Maya's originalthing back in the day because
she really kept us thinkingabout okay, you're building a
product, but you're alsobuilding a company.
You actually have a two-partcompany, whether you like it or
not.
(37:18):
And so you better pay attentionto both items and give them the
time that they need.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
And so, as people came on and communication became
important.
Hitting it directly mattered.
A question for you when you'rebringing new people on board
board what's your onboardingprocess, like that's a good
question we.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
That's a good question we we have, we're,
we're changing we're working,we're changing it right now
because we want to automate partof it, because, uh, every time
we, every time we open a newposition, we get somewhere
around 300 candidates, somethinglike that.
But most of them they shouldn'tbe applying.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Because these are kind of like the people who
don't read.
Oh, we only hire in Europe, ortwo, three hours flight distance
from Barcelona, yet we haveapplications from all over the
world, so these ones getdiscarded from the get-go.
That's why we want to applycertain technologies here,
because otherwise it's a mess,some tinkering, chat, chat, tpt,
if we can do like some sort ofprocess here, but the, the
application process, but the,the application process.
(38:25):
I'm sorry, the interviewingprocess is uh, it goes something
along the lines first, uh,first they have a with our head
of meeting with our head ofpeople who assesses like soft
skills, filling with the person,gets the feeling with the
person which is like okay, couldbe like a good fit, slash at
for the company level oflanguages, both languages and
(38:50):
kind of like some expectationsand general vibes right.
It's more like he's bringing orget to know each other.
If that is successful if shedeems the oh there's potentially
, oh, there's potentiallyhireable then moves forward to
the second part of the process,which is a call with our cto.
(39:12):
That's it, and that's it likewe really want to keep it simple
, because I think this is, keepit, company culture.
Let's keep it simple because Ithink this is company culture.
Let's keep it simple.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I strongly believe that tech interviews are
exaggerated in most cases andthey're full of bullshit.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You know, I've had several friends who are
interviewing for Amazon forTwitch for Google.
Whatever, they have a full weekof eight long sessions of eight
hour long sessions so we wantedto keep it really short, so it
(39:56):
could be as short as hours, twohours right, one with ellie, one
out of people, one with chavis,if there is some doubt.
If there is some doubt, I jumpin.
I jump in.
I have to right and I have to.
I can have the last call.
We're between two candidates.
That is like maybe that that ismore with the finalists two,
three candidates.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Two, three candidates I have to talk with all of them
to share, and I get to share myand my feet.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
But that's it, and I'm very, but that's it.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
It's very simple.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
We try to move as fast as possible, try to keep
the between the first, betweenthe first view and interview,
final and the final decision oneweek one week tops.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Two weeks tops and I think that's too much.
But sometimes you know alsocalendar things here and there.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
But but why?
Why did you actually?
I asked her, I asked her hiring, that's okay.
Sorry, that's still interesting, you're right.
You're right.
Onboarding, no yeah, onboardingis a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Onboarding is fun Actually, is fun actually I like
the onboarding.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
It's okay, sorry, I totally thought language, you
know language.
You know onboarding first off.
Now onboarding, first off thewe have it on the handbook.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
On the handbook it was yeah, we have initially it
was published initially.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
We published the handbook as a sort of onboarding
guide.
It got expanded to having likeeverything in the company
section.
But there's the section on thefirst day.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
First day it just explains there how are you going
to meet the rest of the team.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Usually it starts off with the head of people trying
to get you set up with all theprocesses, with all the
processes, documents and stufflike that, tools and stuff like
that then you meet people likethe two of the three founders,
two of the three founders, so myother co-founders because
they're directly more involvedin the project, so one of them,
the the CTO.
did you see about the technology?
(41:41):
Or if the person we hire ismore on the management side,
then it's with Jordi, the COO,first to talk about relationship
with the team, relationshipwith the customers, reporting
tools and so on.
Then meet the people in yourproject, then meet the people in
your project and at the end ofthe day talk with me.
Right kind of like questionsyou have, or maybe last
questions you have, or maybe theday after.
(42:03):
Um, because maybe that long was,the day was very long and, and
it's the day after talk with me,open questions, you know vision
, mission, company, culture, youknow other, you know things you
might be things you might bewondering about, and that's it,
but yeah, and that's it, butyeah, it's usually very back
they first days, so we like totalk.
(42:26):
It's great, so you have great.
So you find on the boardingprocess.
Find on boarding process.
Do you go through, do you gocompanies in the corporate
values in the course of that?
Speaker 1 (42:36):
I do it, I do it in my talk they through them,
because they're on through them,because they're on the handbook
, and we that's something thatwe discuss in the hiring process
.
Right, that's part of the firstin trouble the first interview
with Ellie and also the firsttalk and the onboarding process.
(42:57):
We do talk about the, the I doncompany.
I don't know, I don't know IfI'm their case, they just go
very deep into them.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
This is our company.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Culture is like this, but I don't know how far
they're going to go.
Oh, I'm going to give you someexamples.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Right In my case, because I'm most of the time
being more reactive to thequestions people might have If
there's not enough to talk.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
we hire a lot of introverts.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
We hire a lot of introverts and most of the time
they're oh wow, I'm talking tothe CEO of the company.
You know, when you see a rabbitflashed by the flashlight of a
giant truck on the road.
They're like this, flashed bythe giant truck on the road, and
so they're.
They're like this, and I don'twant to force anything but one
of the ways to kind of likesoothe the conversation.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
It's talking about the company values, right?
So that's something that I Idefinitely discuss that's great,
I mean that's important.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
That's great, I mean that's important.
It does help to.
It does help to also havepeople wondering.
In a lot of the cases, we hirepeople who have been longtime
fans of the podcast.
Or the blog, or the blog right.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
So I realize that a lot of the times I'm asking them
oh, how well do you know thecompany?
How well do you know thecompany?
Do you want me to?
Speaker 2 (44:22):
go.
Oh no, no, I think I knoweverything because I've been
listening to the podcast.
I've read the entire blog since2014.
Stuff like that and those casesI might forgo these.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I don't know if that's the right thing to do,
but I might forgo because, likemaybe that's too obvious.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
But yeah, it's a good zero.
We should be probably zeroingin on a little bit more.
Does someone go over?
Does someone go over who's atthe company?
Who's at the company?
Speaker 1 (44:48):
right in the words, go through right in the words.
Okay, welcome to mars at it.
Okay, well, I'm gonna describenow, I'm gonna describe here and
what they do people who arehere and what they do.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Funnily enough, in our funOUGH in our last hire, he
did bring up something veryinteresting.
That in our handbook there wasa section of who is who.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
But it was only the head of people and the founders,
and not the rest of the company.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
And that's what like.
It has a very good explanation.
As I mentioned earlier in theconversation, when we first
wrote the handbook, it was aguide for the first day, so the
who's who is like who you'regoing to be talking to on your
first day.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
However, the handbook evolved and expanded and we
didn't really work that part,and that's something that we're
currently actively working onright now.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
But usually we do talk about the rest of the team
and what kind of profiles right,I try not to disclose too much
about what kind of personalitiesare in that fair because I
think that's part of the magicof discovering.
Sure, also, I don't want to say.
I don't want to say like oh,the company's mostly a bunch of
introverts.
Also, I don't want to say likeoh, the company's a bunch of
introverts Mostly a bunch ofintroverts.
(46:06):
I don't want to say it, stufflike that.
I don't want to say it, it'snot fair.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
But also we've got a session on the website.
Everybody, you have everybodyin the company.
Also we have a very nice thingto discover the rest of the team
.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
First off, first friday, first friday welcome
coffee.
We have every friday becauseevery friday at 10 38 am.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
We do have a virtual coffee for everybody to meet
also.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Maybe previously you have, maybe previously you have
met them on that we have themartian tapers going on on
thursday's lunch time wheresomebody discusses like
technology, like that's like asmall showcase of technology.
Showcase of technology, atechnology like a small workshop
, a small showcase of atechnology project, kind of like
a side project they've beenworking on for 30 minutes
lunchtime.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
So maybe you've met the team there, but we welcome
you officially on Friday.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
And we pay for breakfast for everybody and
stuff like that, but alsointernally there's a document
where you can go and find aprofile of everybody write their
own profiles.
10 things you should know aboutme.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
And that is really fun to read.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Nice.
I mean it sounds like you'vegot the sort of rolling
traditions aspect of company aredown pretty solid culture down
pretty solid.
That, yeah, that I see, yeah,but I think that where we are
failing and I'm open areas likeopen a bomb here's like I don't
think company culture are kindof like company culture and like
gives you the tools to makedecisions on your own.
(47:35):
I'd be, and I think that iswhere being because we're remote
again, we're remote, hardremote company and I think we
have been insistent enough ofhow to make decisions on their
own.
That's why I'm saying we'restruggling with team size,
because unless we really equipthe people properly with the
(47:59):
company culture that they saycompany culture is how people
behave when the founders are notin the room.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Right and so I have perceived them.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I have perceived them or we have perceived that most
of the time when we are not inthe room as we read that as
these, or when we're on holiday,we're busy with other stuff.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
We're busy with other stuff that days, those days,
that week, things get stale.
Things get stale, right.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Uh, there are more blocking, blocking processes
because some, most people don'thave the old, most people don't
have the ownership or tools todecide, to make decisions on
their own and they're so used to.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
I can like escalate.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
I can like, escalate that to the founders and let the
founders decide to go.
And we want to change that andwe want to change that?
Speaker 1 (48:46):
I think that's going to be cultural change.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Is that something that you have encountered?
Ownership issues in the companyOwnership issues in the company
.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Not so much.
Not so much.
I mean we had pretty welldefined areas of expertise.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Areas of expertise Even Philip and I are in
specific areas, and then furtherdown and we're pretty flat.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
And we're pretty structured, so it was structured
so Philip and I doing our stuff, and then I had two teammates
in engineering and Philip was atsomeone who was leading
marketing and someone wasleading sales For the most part
for the entire companyorganization so it was pretty
easy to say I'm on anengineering team, I'm on an
(49:30):
engineering team, that type ofthing, and in terms of decision
making, we gave a lot of room tothe people who were running a
given area, because there's noway that you can do it.
There's no way that you can doit as founder of a company.
It's just, you don't want toget in the way of everything.
These folks are good, thesefolks are experts at what they
(49:55):
do, and then what we tried, inaddition, was to give people
time.
So you know I don't knowone-on-ones with the people who
were doing work in areas insidethe company and make sure that
they had time to express.
This is what's going on.
These are the things that weneed to make decisions about.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
these are the things that I'm going to defer
deliberately, and so that typeof stuff I don't know.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
We had a bit of a culture about how we did those
things.
We were heavily GoogleDoc-based at the time.
I suppose maybe Notion would bemore the kind of thing today.
At the time, at the time, anytime that we had a meeting with
someone, we made notes and wealso put an entry for the next
(50:43):
meeting.
An entry for the next meeting.
And so as you're working alongbut before you get together
again, if one of the people whoparticipates in the meeting
thinks of something, you juststick it in the document as
bullet point and then when youmeet you run down.
I mean you'd be surprised.
You'd be surprised More thanenough stuff to go through at
(51:06):
that point.
And then just some open timefor either catching up on what's
going on in life or talkingabout sort of long-term vision
type issues Vision type issues.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
That's time allowed.
And why do you say I rememberin your email you said something
like if we hadn't done this,that would have been our most
expensive fucker.
And it's funny because I weavethis in because at the end of
the episode we always go intothe most expensive fucker, and
you know this because you'vebeen on the show already a
couple of times.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
So how do you think that was going to happen?
Speaker 2 (51:42):
That was going to happen.
Isn't that like some sort ofconfirmation bias.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
Confirmation bias no, I don't think so.
I think you're saying just that.
So, on Slack, one of the thingsthat folks use are some of the
catchphrases from thecommunication workshop.
So if we did a search forobvious on Slack, there would be
hundreds of instances of peopleusing that in their
(52:10):
communications with one another.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Either a combination of.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
I'm being obvious, or that's not obvious, let's make
sure we figure this out.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Let's make sure we figure this out.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
You could see that build up over a period of years.
Not just that but otherexamples, the easiest one to
cite in a conversation like thisIf I add those up and think
about what it would have cost ifevery single one of those was a
communication failure, whichpretty much it would have been
Pretty much it would have beenor could have been at least, or
(52:46):
could have been.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I can't calculate the dollar amount that it would
have been, but it could havebeen business ending for all I
know.
Definitely very helpful.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
It's been very helpful.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
I wanted to have this conversation.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
And helpful for me.
I wanted to have thisconversation and helpful for me.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
I wanted to have this conversation and it really came
out to me I was expecting If wehad had this conversation
separately and then we said, oh,can we have it again on the pod
.
It wouldn't have been nearly asinteresting the second time
around, and that happens in alot of podcasts.
I like this experiment.
I think I will do it more.
I want to have fewer the secondtime around, and that happens
in a lot of podcasts.
So I like this experiment.
I think I will do it more.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
I want to have fewer conversations like oh, this
should have been a podcastepisode.
I want to have more like hey,let's save this.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
You know there might be something.
I'm pretty sure you somecertain.
You know there might besomething lost, like you know
some certain details youcouldn't feature, you didn't
want to record and stuff likethat.
We could save that for thefuture to some stuff in the
email that obviously you use,sort of Whether we're here on a
higher level of detail, but Ithink it not as much detail.
But I think this experiment wasinteresting.
(53:54):
I would really give it thought.
If we can solve the languagething, I think it's, but that's
something that I think it's, butthat would be irresponsible.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
I think it's Just do it around this size.
It would be irresponsible notto do it around this size.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
Thank you for having me.
Thank you very much, sure.
Thank you for having me.
Hello everybody and welcome to Life on Mars.
I'm Alex, CEO and founder ofMarsBase, and in this episode we
bring you Greg Scown,co-founder of TextExpander,
who's been previously on thepodcast a few episodes ago, who
was also a startup brand in oneof our very last events ever,
and this time around we invitehim over to discuss redefining
(00:20):
company culture how they did itat TextExpander, but more so
because we are doing it rightnow on Marspace as 30 people.
Right now we are redefining,we're fine-tuning our company
culture because we believe thisis a turning point for the
company.
And he reached out to me whenhe read an issue of my
newsletter when I was talkingabout this, and said like look,
(00:42):
let's have this conversation onthe podcast.
I don't want to do it first inperson and then repeat it again
on a podcast episode, becausemost of the times it doesn't
like have the same feeling and Iwas going to regret it.
So I said, like let's just havethis conversation on an episode
.
Let's record it the first time.
(01:02):
We have it to be more organic,more natural.
So this is an experiment.
I hope you like it.
I think it came out really good.
So, without further ado, let'sjump right into this episode.
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Welcome, Greg.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Thank you for having me Good morning.
Good morning, we have a bankholiday here, yet we decided to
record this episode.
Thank you for reaching out tothat newsletter I sent, which
you kindly replied to, and Isaid look, I want to have this
conversation.
I sure do, but it's got to beon a podcast episode, because
(01:44):
far too often lately I regrethaving certain conversations
that should have been a podcastepisode and then I'm like God
damn it, this would have made avery good episode and you have
them for a second time.
They're not nearly as good, andso this time we're doing it.
How are you feeling about it?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I'm feeling great.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Want to give some context.
I launched this personalnewsletter six months ago.
It's called Founder to Founderand you're one of the biggest
fans of the newsletter.
I should add Religiously.
Every second newsletter you'reanswering with your thoughts,
which I'm very grateful for andthat gives me, you know, more
(02:28):
motivation to keep writing.
And the other day I was at aSeed Rocket event with all the
mentors of Seed Rocket and wehad the usual kind of
conversations we have with ourfounders, and one of them is hey
, you know, we had this culturalproblem when we hit a certain
amount of scale and,coincidentally, I was having
these thoughts because at MarsSpace we just hit 30 people and
(02:50):
I'm like well, I think ourculture made it this far and we
need to redefine it.
And I wrote this issue of thenewsletter and you answer with a
few thoughts that, if you wantto comment on them, we can build
up from there.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Sure.
So I did answer with somethoughts and I think that the
main thought was that aroundthis size we did something at
Texas Mentor that was reallyhelpful and that was we engaged
a fellow who did communicationclasses and so we actually had
the entire company docommunication classes.
(03:26):
And if I had not done that, orif we had not done that, I think
that we would have been a farworse company.
I mean, we were all remote Atthe time.
We had those classes, we were35 people and they gave us a
common language and they gave ussome super shortcuts.
So I think my favorite amongthe shortcuts is be obvious, and
(03:52):
it's a really, really, reallyshort phrase, but the notion is
that essentially, anytime thatyou're communicating, it's okay
to say more and you will not bepenalized for essentially going
over additional detail or sayingsomething in extra time so that
everyone that you'recommunicating with is on the
same page.
And it even gave us a shorthandto say I am being obvious and
(04:22):
you know barrel on.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
So you know, we had this trick and a couple of
others, and I think that made alot of difference Up until then.
What was the company called?
What was the company called?
Yeah, so we've got to go backin history a little bit.
So in 2013,.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
We were 10 people.
We were 10 people.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And we got together for the first time all in person
, at Macworld, san Francisco.
Literally prior to that, we hadnever all been in the same room
at the same time and then, in2016,.
We did the pivot to the textexpander at SAS.
And in 2017, we had 12 peopleand we kind of passed the pivot.
And we kind of passed the pivotand Maya, who was the product
(04:57):
manager for text expander, saidokay, philip and Greg, if we
don't define our culture andhire our culture, then we aren't
going to be a company that Iwant to work at in the not too
distant future, and we werebowled over a bit.
We were incredibly grateful forher feedback, but also like oh.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
God.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
We seriously have work to do.
This is very, very important.
This is very, very important.
So we did, so we put together alist.
So we put together a list ofthings new hires to have, new
hires to have qualities and umwe came up with six.
We came up with we wanted to behonest.
We wanted to be honest,personable, positive, smart and
reliable.
(05:37):
Smart and reliable.
The things that were the thingswe set to actually we set to
actually building that into thehiring process, building that
into the hiring process.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
And essentially the people who interviewed someone
graded them on thosecharacteristics.
And so if we had somebody whointerviewed, and even if they
were the most amazing, candidatefor the job, but they were not
personable or they talked abouthow disorganized they were and
(06:06):
how they had a lot of troublewith that.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
That was kind of an immediate no.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
That was kind of an immediate no.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
No offense to the person involved, but in terms of
building a culture, in terms ofcollecting people who matched
what we needed that wassomething that we started to do.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
That was something that we started to do.
It's more or less around thesize of people that they say
company culture is defined bythe first 10 hires.
I disagree a little bit.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
In our case, that might be confirmation bias.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Confirmation bias, of course, but in our case our
company culture was defined fromthe get-go as something very
intentional by my co-foundersand I and we thought look, it's
going to be us and we drawinspiration from companies like
Pocket Buffer and companies likethat, which, at the time, for
an agency, didn't really makemuch sense.
(06:59):
It was kind of like a startup-ything to do in Spain, but we
were always set out to do.
But we were always set out todo for me right, things for me
right.
Uh, we decided to define acompany culture that was not
great, good, not great, but itworked for us.
And then hires, the first 10hires, I don't think they really
find it.
Further, define it further.
We fine-tune it we fine-tune itdown the line, down the line,
(07:22):
maybe in year three or somethinglike year four, something like
that.
Because, look, english isn't ournative language, and so maybe
we had some things that wereexplicitly stated very obviously
, or a couple of them wereredundant.
We had stuff like less is more,quality over quantity, remote
(07:46):
first optimize for remote, giveback to the community and stuff
like that.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
We had way too many items, and then we decided to
shorten that list a little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I don't think.
But I don't think, Not becauseof them right.
Not because of them right.
I don't want to throw anybodyunder the bus.
I don't think our hires, Idon't think our hires come true
to the company culture.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Maybe because we actually didn't talk that openly
about the company culture wedid only talk about a couple of
items which were beingspecialized against being a
generalist specifically, workingin European rail and not doing
all of the other technologies.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
The other one is less is more, so simply respect them
.
But the rest they sort of likethey were floating around the
company in the presentations onthe website.
I think they were not even onthe website.
We didn't do a great job.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Some of these things permeated into the company
culture.
Now that we are 30, we're likefirst.
I realize a couple of things.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
First I realize a couple of things.
First, company culture is noton the website.
What the fuck?
The second is I'm pretty surenobody from our employees could
recite the company culture frommemory, and I think that's my
fault.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So, given that we have reached this point and
we're going to have thisconversation about hey, what
should we do with companyculture?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
It's very good that you shared that.
It's very good that you sharedthat.
It's more or less coincideswith initial company culture,
initial company culture.
Redefine or establish or cementthat by size 10 and then 30 and
then 30.
Something else in your case was35.
Um, like how many years?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
why, like how many years?
Speaker 2 (09:37):
yeah well, so we should, we should back up.
So we also did something.
We also did something at about.
So in 2019, in 2019, we had our, we called it our first annual
offsite.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Of course, 2020 was COVID, and so it proved not to
be right away, but at any rate,uh, but we had everybody
together, we had everybodyoutside of denver.
We were outside and uh, and wehad the qualities for new hires,
the qualities for new hiresthat we had created people on
but not talked about much and sowe essentially did a survey of
(10:13):
everyone talking with thosevalues, sort of in the
background, trying to see, okay,can we distill this further so
that, as you said, so thateveryone knows it, so it's easy
to remember.
You wanted everyone in thecompany to know this is it, and
so we're hoping to get it downto a few fewer items and the
(10:35):
result of that wasaccountability, passion for the
customer, integrity and teamwork.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
So those are the four .
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Everyone in the company knows them integrity and
teamwork.
So those are the four.
Everyone in the company knowsthem.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Everyone in the company knows them.
Philip took to having a slideat the end of every monthly
company meeting with those fourthings on it and reiterating
them every month.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean like seriously , we took it maybe to the
extreme, but we really, reallywanted to ensure that everybody
knew that this is where we werecoming from and that if you were
making a decision, these couldguide your decision.
These could guide your decision.
So you're making a decisionthat was hostile to the customer
.
Hostile to the customer, that'snot a good decision.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
That's just by definition.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Just by definition, if you, if you know were I don't
know were freezing out, whenyour teammates freezing out,
when you're tired because youknow I pause and think it's like
, oh jeez.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You might pause and think they have to make time
Because that's part of teamwork.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Because that's part of teamwork.
So that was one thing that wedid in the middle.
It sounds like maybe whereyou're at, maybe where you're at
.
This is a good exercise becauseyou've got sort of your list of
things that you've beenadvertising on your website.
You've been advertising on yourwebsite In your documents and
in your description of thecompany you have pieces of this,
(11:47):
I think, pieces of this, Ithink.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
And so involving the whole team in crafting where
you're at and where you're atand where you might go might be
a helpful exercise.
How much do you think this?
is affected by both of ourcompanies being remote, because
one of the challenges of beingremote companies is that the
(12:11):
bonding between the teammatestakes more time.
The company culture is sort ofloser and I don't think we have
experienced any singulardifficulty by this fact.
But I think that we could bemore cohesive as a team, as a
company culture, if we were notremote.
(12:32):
But that's not going to happenanytime soon.
Hence my question Did you thinkthat something dawned on you?
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Dawned on you Like oh , yeah, this happens because
we're remote, yeah, definitely.
We felt that establishingvalues was very important.
That's something that on youlike, on you like, oh, yeah,
that this happens because we'reyeah, no, definitely, and we
felt that it's not important andthat's a little bit of a
company.
And then the following step ofthe following communication
classes doing communicationclasses.
It was necessary.
It was necessary as we gotbigger.
One other thing occurred in themiddle.
One other thing occurred in themiddle, which is Maya again,
(13:03):
huge credit to her said okay, abunch of the people who are
joining the company are greatpeople and match our values, but
they have come to us from toxicenvironments.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
They were not at a company that lived these values.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
They were in conflict with their peers or their
bosses.
They were in conflict withtheir peers or their bosses.
And one of the reasons thatthey chose us is that their
personality fit the values butnot their lived work experience,
and so this actually really wasthe seed to get into the
communication classes forexample in a prior company.
(13:48):
If someone asked a question,then they might appear
incompetent, you know, at Smileand then TaxExpander.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
If someone asked a question, that was a question
and worthy of an answer.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Always, and so even sort of moral lines of when in
doubt, ask when in doubt ask,don't just wait.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Don't, don't, don't, and so it was important, and so
it was important to have talk toeach other, talk to each other,
and we managed to manage it asit worked, but to talk to each
other, about to each other abouthow these things work, how
these things work, how they workout, how they work our
environment, in our environment,how that might be a little
(14:23):
different, how that might be alittle different than what they
had experienced prior it is agood point and it is a good
point, and don't I?
I don't think we want to godown the rabbit.
We want to go down the rabbitculture, feet versus culture at
that, because I think thatthat's.
That's also like a good debate,to have maybe another episode
(14:43):
when we are certainly when weare evaluating candidates I know
first we, I you know first we.
We do have a screening processin which we see persons.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
This person, hasn't read the actual job description
right this is it.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Oh, we only hire in these locations, or you have to
have this.
And then they submit something.
Maybe they say something elsein the position.
They submit a frontendapplication.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
It's like fuck If he or she doesn't read the job
description she or he will notbe reading the actual, like the
feature descriptions on linearright, on geo, on Trello,
whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I think that being a good reader is that something.
But also, you know, we At acertain point we realized that
we're only hiring the same kindof people.
And I don't know how thatcontributes to expanding the
diversity of your company, andit's very easy to fall prey to
(15:42):
the.
This can profile work for us inthe past.
Let's hire him or her againinstead of trying something else
, but I think that's somethingdifferent.
That's something different andentirely A little bit off topic
of what I wanted to cover heretoday.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I wanted to go deeper maybe into this process
bringing somebody external tothe company.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Consultant, slash coach, whatever you want to call
it.
Because for me, the firstreaction to this I'm always very
skeptical of consultant coachesor coaches, because I think
that most of them they have avery bad reputation because a
large portion of these peoplethey just do an okay job or a
(16:31):
subpar job and they give badreputation to the rest.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
It's kind of like an agile coach.
It's kind of like an agilecoach.
I'm pretty sure there'ssomebody who's a great agile
coach, and brings a lot of time.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
All of the agile coaches I've met in my entire
life Potion, right, all of the Ishall coaches I've met in my
entire life right, so ocean,right, or you know, account
lawyers, account notaries,notaries and stuff.
They don't have the best, theydon't have the best reputation
and not a place in their job.
It's not a place their job justbecause a lot of people just do
a mediocre job and that kind oflike permeates into so I'm very
(17:01):
, I'm very skeptical about this,but I'm open to the idea.
Can you give some details to?
How did you get in touch withthis person?
What was the process?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
like Cost Time scales of the project.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, and I think I can even tie the two together,
which was that we started tryingto do something different and
we landed doing something thatworked out well so what we
started with was at that sameoffsite in.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Denver we did like a personality profile.
It wasn't Myers-Briggs, it wassome other thing.
So we all ran a book togetherthat had it was neither, it was
something else.
It wasn't Myers-Briggs, it wassome other thing.
So we all read a book together.
So we all read a book togetherthat had this the Enneagram.
The Enneagram.
It was neither, it wassomething else, but it's the
same thing else.
And so there were sevencategories that people could
fall into.
People could fall into.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
And there was a whole language around it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
There was a whole language around it.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
It was interesting we brought in Philip's former CEO
and his wife, who is a VP ofsales somewhere came in and
helped with this, because it'shelpful to have people who are
not Philip and I leading theworkshop, so that we would be
part of the workshop.
And we did it as you said.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I think 18 of us or 17 of us wound up in the same
group pretty much every time,occasionally, we were the
outlier, but really, as you said, we pretty much hired people
that were, I suppose, of similarpersonalities.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So we decided that fixing that may not have been
our best paper.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We had done this for a reason, and it was working for
us, so it was not necessarilythat we go done this, that we
probably had done this for areason, and it was working for
us, so it was not necessarilyurgent that we go change that
what we found was more urgentwas that we ensured that
everyone we did have wascommunicating well and the other
thing that forced that is thatover the following year we grew
(19:03):
from 20 to 35 people to put 15people on board.
We did onboarding for all thepeople.
We should probably talk aboutthat later, but that's something
that's important and then werealized we really needed
communication skills, and so wecast around so just as you do
for your lawyer or youraccountant or your accountant.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
You ask the people that you know who do they know,
who are experts in the field andwho are good.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And so that's how we found Aaron, and he has works.
He's an expert in his field.
He's an expert in his field.
He's got track record.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
He's got track record .
Speaker 1 (19:40):
We talked to people, he had come into to this, who
are four classes of a similarsize.
Hey, how did this go?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
for you.
Hey, how did this go for you?
Speaker 1 (19:48):
and and that was essentially the process, that
was essentially.
That is the expert vetting theexpert the other thing was we
structured the other thing waswe structured so ultimately,
over the course of the year, wespent the course of a year, we
spent five figures expenditurefor the company.
But we started with a pilot aclass that was maybe, I think,
(20:14):
three hours, with everyone inthe company to do one skill.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And we wanted to see how that went.
We wanted to see how that went.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
And the deal, if I recall correctly me I don't
remember exactly, I don'tremember I think the deal was
that we got.
I think the deal was that wegot to do the one that we didn't
have an obligation, but that wedidn't have an obligation to
follow here, uh.
However, at the outset when weestablished the pilot when we
established the pilot, we alsoestablished the price for the
right.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So it was a it was.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It was a paid trial, it was a paid trial it was a
paid trial, but it was, it was.
We liked that it was a paidtrial, that it was a paid trial,
that was a good business model,in our opinion, for someone who
was doing this, for someone whowas doing this.
Don't give it away for free.
It doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Give us one skill.
Give us one skill For areasonable price A reasonable.
Give us one skill for areasonable price, followed by a
whole program that ultimatelyturned out to be worth doing.
How much time did you have toallocate for that?
As a former employee of bigcompanies, where I perceive that
(21:23):
we were spending maybe notenough time in soft skills
training.
Yet when we were doingtrainings they were pretty
useless Basic stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Basic stuff.
Like email security orPowerPoint presentations Basic,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Microsoft Office and stuff like that I think my
perception of these.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
HR-led programs were that they were too generalist.
I'm speaking when I was atDeloitte and other companies in
our size.
It's okay.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The perception from the employees most of the time
is that, wow, this is rubbish tome because it doesn't apply to
me.
Therefore, wasting time andtherefore when a new training,
you're always looking at itbecause it's like, oh yeah,
another hr and uh, maybe thatone is, and uh, maybe that one
is interesting, but yourbarriers are up, right, and so,
(22:23):
um, as a founder now, as afounder now, I'm like, should I
be pushing these kind of thingsto my people when I never like
them?
I never enjoyed them.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I never thought they were useful, but, but maybe this
time there will be more thoughtthrough because it's a smaller
group of people.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Smaller group of people.
It's very specific to what wedo.
It's very specific to what wedo.
We don't have nearly therotation that these big
companies have, so maybe this issomething that we could package
and just put something veryinteresting for the company.
Yeah, I understand from theperspective of developers like,
oh yeah, yeah, another training,oh yeah, another training, even
if it's the first one we do atMarksMate.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Oh, no trainings.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Everyone joined this company to do freaking trainings
.
The only thing I want to do isdevelop.
So, as a founder, how did youapproach this?
Sure, I think we approached itwith honesty.
We approached it with honesty,so we started with.
This is with a commonperception of this type of thing
.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
And we said we, as the founders, are accountable.
If we do this three-hour pilotand everyone hates it, or we
have a ton of negative feedbackor we got nothing out of it it's
over, it's done, it's over, noproblem.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
That said, we want the benefit of the doubt from
you, please.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
We want you to do this wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
We want you to do this wholeheartedly and see if
we, collectively, can getsomething out of it.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
We, collectively, can get something out of it and if
so, then yeah, we'd like you onboard.
For the rest, we'd like you onboard for the rest If we're
getting something out of it, ifwe're getting something out of
it.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
This is going to be worth it, and I think that it
didn't hurt to say.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It didn't hurt to say we're not out to.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
We're not out to essentially pad the calendar
essentially pad the calendarwith trainings or additional
requirements, additionalrequirements we're out to solve
a specific problem a lot oftimes, in a lot of times, in a
company of 35 people, wires getcrossed.
Wires get crossed fail tocommunicate as well as they'll
communicate as well as they,possibly not because they're bad
, not because they're bad people, not because they're not good
(24:24):
at their job, not because of anyparticular fault, of their own
particular fault, butcollectively, but collectively
we didn't have the tools that weneeded we had identified
someone who we had identifiedsomeone who could help us build
those tools and how much timedid you and how much time did
you?
And how much time did you whenyou were?
Speaker 1 (24:45):
The first trial period right that you said it
was a three-hour session, andthen you decided that you wanted
to come in for the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
How much time did you have to allocate and who was
involved in each part?
Were you all involved?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
at the same time.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
So it was something like two-hour sessions on every
Friday.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
The whole team gets there.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
And how did that affect the operability of the
company?
Because then it's like oh,everybody's involved in this,
everybody's involved in this, orto a certain part of people,
how do?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
you compensate for this from the business
perspective.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, now defaulting.
My memory may be unhelpful tothis, but if I remember
correctly, I think it wasroughly quarterly.
I think it was roughlyquarterly.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
And it was roughly four to six hours, and it was
roughly four to six hours and itwas the whole team, and it was
the whole team.
So really we spent a day, aquarter, we spent a day, a
quarter, a day.
And then we did another thingwhich was for the management, so
a smaller group of people,maybe six to eight of us.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
We did an additional, I believe also quarterly thing
where this was okay, so you'remanaging.
How do you help people align onthis?
So if you encounter an instancewhere someone's not
communicating well and it'sobvious to you and maybe obvious
(26:05):
to people around them how doyou help them do better?
Essentially, a combination ofleading through example and for
lack of a better term defectresolution, but once a day per
quarter doesn't seem like verymuch to me.
It could be a day off or acompany retreat, something like
(26:26):
that.
Customers are largelyunaffected.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
It doesn't really affect that much the operations
of the company.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
It doesn't break into things.
It's not like having one dayper week during the six-week
period.
Wow, that wouldn't be effective.
Let's begin with 20% reductionof the production time.
Right, yeah, production time,right, and also in your case,
you're a.
Saas right.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
So I don't know how that, like it's different from
us.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
It's different from us because we build per hour.
So therefore, every moment thatwe don't work, maybe in a size
of like nothing to break, yourcustomer still pays.
Did you get?
Speaker 1 (27:02):
together for this, or was?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
it done remotely.
This all occurred during COVID,so we really didn't have an
option to get together, but itwould have been remote or not.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
That said, we might have done it all in the
marketplace.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
We would have had a follow-up altogether at our
second annual, had there been asecond annual, because that
would have been a nice in-personcomponent that matched the
program that we were doing.
But I don't think we would havedone any more than that in
person, because it's funny.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Because it's funny Not in your case, not in your
case.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Not in your case, but companies trying to solve the
complications.
You know the complicationsderived from being remote, doing
this kind of course remotely, Idon't think it really helps.
I understand that.
But I understand that maybethis is the way to approach it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
But maybe the real difficulty here is for the
leader of the training, sayinghey, you have to be really
connected to this.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
You have to be wired because otherwise you're
disconnected from this, we'renot solving anything and the
results will not get him.
How did you measure the impactfrom this?
Was there some sort of KPIsthere, some sort of like kpi's?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
agreed upon, or like what, what?
What was the agreement like?
What was the agreement like?
And?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I mean we did a combination of post, of post
training, surveys, trainingsurveys to gauge people's
satisfaction with the survey butalso to gauge, but also I think
one of the surveys.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I think one of the surveys.
Can you give an example whereyou used one of the things you
learned?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
in your day-to-day.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
To our delight, people gave multiple examples.
People gave multiple examples.
Right, I mean, I think we gotone survey with zero examples
and 34 surveys with at least oneand 20 surveys with two or more
, and so that was a good hint ofokay, this is working, and we
were worried about that.
We were worried about that.
(29:07):
We were like, okay, we're goingto ask this and nobody's going
to write anything, then what arewe going to do?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
But it turned out that asking fell into the
category of be obvious, askingfell into the category of be
obvious, and answering workedreally well and told us what we
needed, so we didn't really haveto work a lot harder at
figuring out whether it workedor not.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
And we figured if we had to work hard to figure out
whether it worked or not?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
then it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
That's actually a good point.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
That's actually a good point.
That's actually a good point.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's actually a good point.
Also, I have to think thatmaybe you have to consider that
you probably have, or you dothem half rotation.
You do them half rotation, if Iremember correctly, in your
company, like they were stayingfor long.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I don't know how that affected.
I don't know how that affectedHaving people with long tenures
at the company they are usuallynot as engaged as people who
have been recently hired thatthey just want to display extra
motivation.
They want to prove themselves.
They want to always beresponsible.
People will be like 70 yearsinto a company like, yeah, they
(30:13):
do a great job, but they usuallydisengage from certain
activities because they're likeoh yeah, I've seen this before,
I haven't done it for a year, itdoesn't really matter, like.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
But they usually disengage from certain
activities because they're like,oh yeah, I've seen this before,
I haven't done it for a year.
Like, for instance, we reallymatter like, for instance, on
friday.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
On fridays, every week, we send an internal poll
asking for people to share thehighlights.
It can be personal, it can bework, it can be personal, it can
be both.
And, uh, we see that somepeople are very consistent with
this.
They have been doing this forseven years, something like that
.
Other people, especially likethe most senior people in the
company yeah, like I'm too busy,yeah, whatever, like I'm too
busy to do other stuff, or maybe, you know, for another reason
(30:48):
they're disengaged with this.
So therefore, the problem ontothe new one hires, because
they're saying like oh, thesepeople don't do it right, then
why should I right?
Did you see any differencebetween?
Did you see any differencebetween these people with longer
tenures and those recentlyhired?
Speaker 1 (31:02):
in this kind of process.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
I think what we asked of the people who had the
longer tenures was for them toserve as the example to the
other folks, because if they did, their lives would be better,
and if they didn't, their liveswould effectively be worse.
They knew by the time that wewere doing this how important it
(31:24):
was, so it wasn't that hard toget them engaged.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Also to Aaron's credit.
He is the master of the Zoombreakout room.
I mean, I've never seen Zoombreakout rooms used to greater
effect and also he was perfectlycomfortable using and requiring
online tools.
So we were doing job booms andwe were doing things in the
(31:51):
breakout rooms using tools thatwork well for remote companies.
So I think that engagementwasn't difficult, because
leading by example was importantand teamwork was important, and
then I also think that hisexpertise in engaging people
just in general was infectious.
(32:13):
It worked well for anyone who'dbeen around for a long time I
think he was used to going intoan organization where there were
veterans and there were newpeople.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
And bridging.
That was important.
And how about the language?
Because as a company you werepromoted.
You had people all over theglobe for those who were
spanning nine time zones.
I remember you saying, and sotherefore I'm assuming you were
hiring people with pristine.
English skills right.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Otherwise, there's a certain friction involved in the
difference of levels in thelanguage, especially when you
know there's a modern languagein the company.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And then you want to centralize everything there,
right, in our case, we haveEnglish first, but the reality
is like everybody lives in Spainor Portugal, so therefore it's
kind of like a lot of Spanishand Portuguese guys struggling
sometimes with the I.
You can speak Spanish, but atthe same time you know
everything is in English.
But if we were to conduct thesekind of sessions, with somebody
(33:14):
like Aaron, we would do it inEnglish.
I'm assuming we're not a lot ofpeople.
We have a fraction of ourpeople who sing English not the
best, so I think there would besome language friction there.
Did you have any problems withthese or with the time zones or
how these people are adapted tothese?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah, I think the time zones were the trickiest
because getting everyone tooverlap, so we had one person
who was in Dubai and shedutifully did this from.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I think it was like 10 pm to 2 am and we were
incredibly grateful.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
No, we primed this.
We'd like to work with you.
We're going to work with you ondates and times.
We don't want this to ruin yourlife, but would you indulge us?
And she was game.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
In the end.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
We checked in with her.
We checked in with her.
We're like okay, you made thisgreat sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
This was a good pitch for the pilot.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
You made the sacrifice once.
We're going to ask it of youfour more times.
Is this okay?
Did this work for you?
Did this work for you?
Did this work for you?
And she actually was thrownhurt to some place else.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
There were other options for how to deal with
this.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
She said, no, it wasn't that hard to change my
schedule because I knew it wascoming.
I was completely engaged and infact we did ask people who, in
your session, felt the mostengaged and she got some pretty
good thumbs up from hercolleagues.
Not easy at 10 pm.
Not easy at 10 pm.
No, no, I realize, no, no, Irealize.
So time zones was a thing, sotime zones was a thing.
(34:49):
And then of our people at thetime so 35, probably five were
not native English speakers butall had significant English
ability.
We didn't really see thathappening, but I think it would
be something that you couldaddress directly with whoever
would be interested in doingthis with you.
This is the composition of ourteam.
(35:14):
We should hit this directly onthe head instead of pretending
it doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And that might be part of the pilot.
That might be part of the pilot.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
That might be part of the pilot.
Let's see.
Okay, let's see, and if not,then let's try and find somebody
in Spain who's going to conductthis in Spanish, your
Portuguese folks are kind of outof luck Exactly, unless we give
them a couple beers.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Because then Spanish sounds like beer Exactly, Unless
we give them a couple beers orrefined company culture is a
soft way of admitting that itwasn't solid enough, At least in
(36:02):
our case.
Maybe I'm projecting here, butin my case it's like well, maybe
we didn't do the best job or ithasn't really adapted to how
the company has changed In part.
It's because the company now is11 years old, and the last time
we put some touches on thecompany culture was 70 years ago
.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
We've undergone the COVID crisis, the 2022 tech
meltdown crisis, other marketchanges, technology changes,
team changes, even like we havenew business lines and whatnot,
we're bigger as a company.
Right In the meantime, weadopted ASIC and then we
reverted it because it didn'twork.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
So we've undergone several changes and I think that
right now is why are we tryingto fix company culture when we
should be trying to fix theunderlying problems instead?
I don't know if that's a sharedconcern.
Is that something that youidentified as?
Speaker 1 (36:58):
well, or maybe I'm just projecting here.
I think in our case we saw itcoming and we're again kind of
grateful to Maya's originalthing back in the day because
she really kept us thinkingabout okay, you're building a
product, but you're alsobuilding a company.
You actually have a two-partcompany, whether you like it or
not.
(37:18):
And so you better pay attentionto both items and give them the
time that they need.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
And so, as people came on and communication became
important.
Hitting it directly mattered.
A question for you when you'rebringing new people on board
board what's your onboardingprocess, like that's a good
question we.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
That's a good question we we have, we're,
we're changing we're working,we're changing it right now
because we want to automate partof it, because, uh, every time
we, every time we open a newposition, we get somewhere
around 300 candidates, somethinglike that.
But most of them they shouldn'tbe applying.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Because these are kind of like the people who
don't read.
Oh, we only hire in Europe, ortwo, three hours flight distance
from Barcelona, yet we haveapplications from all over the
world, so these ones getdiscarded from the get-go.
That's why we want to applycertain technologies here,
because otherwise it's a mess,some tinkering, chat, chat, tpt,
if we can do like some sort ofprocess here, but the, the
application process, but the,the application process.
(38:25):
I'm sorry, the interviewingprocess is uh, it goes something
along the lines first, uh,first they have a with our head
of meeting with our head ofpeople who assesses like soft
skills, filling with the person,gets the feeling with the
person which is like okay, couldbe like a good fit, slash at
for the company level oflanguages, both languages and
(38:50):
kind of like some expectationsand general vibes right.
It's more like he's bringing orget to know each other.
If that is successful if shedeems the oh there's potentially
, oh, there's potentiallyhireable then moves forward to
the second part of the process,which is a call with our cto.
(39:12):
That's it, and that's it likewe really want to keep it simple
, because I think this is, keepit, company culture.
Let's keep it simple because Ithink this is company culture.
Let's keep it simple.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I strongly believe that tech interviews are
exaggerated in most cases andthey're full of bullshit.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You know, I've had several friends who are
interviewing for Amazon forTwitch for Google.
Whatever, they have a full weekof eight long sessions of eight
hour long sessions so we wantedto keep it really short, so it
(39:56):
could be as short as hours, twohours right, one with ellie, one
out of people, one with chavis,if there is some doubt.
If there is some doubt, I jumpin.
I jump in.
I have to right and I have to.
I can have the last call.
We're between two candidates.
That is like maybe that that ismore with the finalists two,
three candidates.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Two, three candidates I have to talk with all of them
to share, and I get to share myand my feet.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
But that's it, and I'm very, but that's it.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
It's very simple.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
We try to move as fast as possible, try to keep
the between the first, betweenthe first view and interview,
final and the final decision oneweek one week tops.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Two weeks tops and I think that's too much.
But sometimes you know alsocalendar things here and there.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
But but why?
Why did you actually?
I asked her, I asked her hiring, that's okay.
Sorry, that's still interesting, you're right.
You're right.
Onboarding, no yeah, onboardingis a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Onboarding is fun Actually, is fun actually I like
the onboarding.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
It's okay, sorry, I totally thought language, you
know language.
You know onboarding first off.
Now onboarding, first off thewe have it on the handbook.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
On the handbook it was yeah, we have initially it
was published initially.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
We published the handbook as a sort of onboarding
guide.
It got expanded to having likeeverything in the company
section.
But there's the section on thefirst day.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
First day it just explains there how are you going
to meet the rest of the team.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Usually it starts off with the head of people trying
to get you set up with all theprocesses, with all the
processes, documents and stufflike that, tools and stuff like
that then you meet people likethe two of the three founders,
two of the three founders, so myother co-founders because
they're directly more involvedin the project, so one of them,
the the CTO.
did you see about the technology?
(41:41):
Or if the person we hire ismore on the management side,
then it's with Jordi, the COO,first to talk about relationship
with the team, relationshipwith the customers, reporting
tools and so on.
Then meet the people in yourproject, then meet the people in
your project and at the end ofthe day talk with me.
Right kind of like questionsyou have, or maybe last
questions you have, or maybe theday after.
(42:03):
Um, because maybe that long was,the day was very long and, and
it's the day after talk with me,open questions, you know vision
, mission, company, culture, youknow other, you know things you
might be things you might bewondering about, and that's it,
but yeah, and that's it, butyeah, it's usually very back
they first days, so we like totalk.
(42:26):
It's great, so you have great.
So you find on the boardingprocess.
Find on boarding process.
Do you go through, do you gocompanies in the corporate
values in the course of that?
Speaker 1 (42:36):
I do it, I do it in my talk they through them,
because they're on through them,because they're on the handbook
, and we that's something thatwe discuss in the hiring process
.
Right, that's part of the firstin trouble the first interview
with Ellie and also the firsttalk and the onboarding process.
(42:57):
We do talk about the, the I doncompany.
I don't know, I don't know IfI'm their case, they just go
very deep into them.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
This is our company.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Culture is like this, but I don't know how far
they're going to go.
Oh, I'm going to give you someexamples.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Right In my case, because I'm most of the time
being more reactive to thequestions people might have If
there's not enough to talk.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
we hire a lot of introverts.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
We hire a lot of introverts and most of the time
they're oh wow, I'm talking tothe CEO of the company.
You know, when you see a rabbitflashed by the flashlight of a
giant truck on the road.
They're like this, flashed bythe giant truck on the road, and
so they're.
They're like this, and I don'twant to force anything but one
of the ways to kind of likesoothe the conversation.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
It's talking about the company values, right?
So that's something that I Idefinitely discuss that's great,
I mean that's important.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
That's great, I mean that's important.
It does help to.
It does help to also havepeople wondering.
In a lot of the cases, we hirepeople who have been longtime
fans of the podcast.
Or the blog, or the blog right.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
So I realize that a lot of the times I'm asking them
oh, how well do you know thecompany?
How well do you know thecompany?
Do you want me to?
Speaker 2 (44:22):
go.
Oh no, no, I think I knoweverything because I've been
listening to the podcast.
I've read the entire blog since2014.
Stuff like that and those casesI might forgo these.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I don't know if that's the right thing to do,
but I might forgo because, likemaybe that's too obvious.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
But yeah, it's a good zero.
We should be probably zeroingin on a little bit more.
Does someone go over?
Does someone go over who's atthe company?
Who's at the company?
Speaker 1 (44:48):
right in the words, go through right in the words.
Okay, welcome to mars at it.
Okay, well, I'm gonna describenow, I'm gonna describe here and
what they do people who arehere and what they do.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Funnily enough, in our funOUGH in our last hire, he
did bring up something veryinteresting.
That in our handbook there wasa section of who is who.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
But it was only the head of people and the founders,
and not the rest of the company.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
And that's what like.
It has a very good explanation.
As I mentioned earlier in theconversation, when we first
wrote the handbook, it was aguide for the first day, so the
who's who is like who you'regoing to be talking to on your
first day.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
However, the handbook evolved and expanded and we
didn't really work that part,and that's something that we're
currently actively working onright now.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
But usually we do talk about the rest of the team
and what kind of profiles right,I try not to disclose too much
about what kind of personalitiesare in that fair because I
think that's part of the magicof discovering.
Sure, also, I don't want to say.
I don't want to say like oh,the company's mostly a bunch of
introverts.
Also, I don't want to say likeoh, the company's a bunch of
introverts Mostly a bunch ofintroverts.
(46:06):
I don't want to say it, stufflike that.
I don't want to say it, it'snot fair.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
But also we've got a session on the website.
Everybody, you have everybodyin the company.
Also we have a very nice thingto discover the rest of the team
.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
First off, first friday, first friday welcome
coffee.
We have every friday becauseevery friday at 10 38 am.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
We do have a virtual coffee for everybody to meet
also.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Maybe previously you have, maybe previously you have
met them on that we have themartian tapers going on on
thursday's lunch time wheresomebody discusses like
technology, like that's like asmall showcase of technology.
Showcase of technology, atechnology like a small workshop
, a small showcase of atechnology project, kind of like
a side project they've beenworking on for 30 minutes
lunchtime.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
So maybe you've met the team there, but we welcome
you officially on Friday.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
And we pay for breakfast for everybody and
stuff like that, but alsointernally there's a document
where you can go and find aprofile of everybody write their
own profiles.
10 things you should know aboutme.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
And that is really fun to read.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Nice.
I mean it sounds like you'vegot the sort of rolling
traditions aspect of company aredown pretty solid culture down
pretty solid.
That, yeah, that I see, yeah,but I think that where we are
failing and I'm open areas likeopen a bomb here's like I don't
think company culture are kindof like company culture and like
gives you the tools to makedecisions on your own.
(47:35):
I'd be, and I think that iswhere being because we're remote
again, we're remote, hardremote company and I think we
have been insistent enough ofhow to make decisions on their
own.
That's why I'm saying we'restruggling with team size,
because unless we really equipthe people properly with the
(47:59):
company culture that they saycompany culture is how people
behave when the founders are notin the room.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Right and so I have perceived them.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I have perceived them or we have perceived that most
of the time when we are not inthe room as we read that as
these, or when we're on holiday,we're busy with other stuff.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
We're busy with other stuff that days, those days,
that week, things get stale.
Things get stale, right.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Uh, there are more blocking, blocking processes
because some, most people don'thave the old, most people don't
have the ownership or tools todecide, to make decisions on
their own and they're so used to.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
I can like escalate.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
I can like, escalate that to the founders and let the
founders decide to go.
And we want to change that andwe want to change that?
Speaker 1 (48:46):
I think that's going to be cultural change.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Is that something that you have encountered?
Ownership issues in the companyOwnership issues in the company
.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Not so much.
Not so much.
I mean we had pretty welldefined areas of expertise.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Areas of expertise Even Philip and I are in
specific areas, and then furtherdown and we're pretty flat.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
And we're pretty structured, so it was structured
so Philip and I doing our stuff, and then I had two teammates
in engineering and Philip was atsomeone who was leading
marketing and someone wasleading sales For the most part
for the entire companyorganization so it was pretty
easy to say I'm on anengineering team, I'm on an
(49:30):
engineering team, that type ofthing, and in terms of decision
making, we gave a lot of room tothe people who were running a
given area, because there's noway that you can do it.
There's no way that you can doit as founder of a company.
It's just, you don't want toget in the way of everything.
These folks are good, thesefolks are experts at what they
(49:55):
do, and then what we tried, inaddition, was to give people
time.
So you know I don't knowone-on-ones with the people who
were doing work in areas insidethe company and make sure that
they had time to express.
This is what's going on.
These are the things that weneed to make decisions about.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
these are the things that I'm going to defer
deliberately, and so that typeof stuff I don't know.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
We had a bit of a culture about how we did those
things.
We were heavily GoogleDoc-based at the time.
I suppose maybe Notion would bemore the kind of thing today.
At the time, at the time, anytime that we had a meeting with
someone, we made notes and wealso put an entry for the next
(50:43):
meeting.
An entry for the next meeting.
And so as you're working alongbut before you get together
again, if one of the people whoparticipates in the meeting
thinks of something, you juststick it in the document as
bullet point and then when youmeet you run down.
I mean you'd be surprised.
You'd be surprised More thanenough stuff to go through at
(51:06):
that point.
And then just some open timefor either catching up on what's
going on in life or talkingabout sort of long-term vision
type issues Vision type issues.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
That's time allowed.
And why do you say I rememberin your email you said something
like if we hadn't done this,that would have been our most
expensive fucker.
And it's funny because I weavethis in because at the end of
the episode we always go intothe most expensive fucker, and
you know this because you'vebeen on the show already a
couple of times.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
So how do you think that was going to happen?
Speaker 2 (51:42):
That was going to happen.
Isn't that like some sort ofconfirmation bias.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
Confirmation bias no, I don't think so.
I think you're saying just that.
So, on Slack, one of the thingsthat folks use are some of the
catchphrases from thecommunication workshop.
So if we did a search forobvious on Slack, there would be
hundreds of instances of peopleusing that in their
(52:10):
communications with one another.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Either a combination of.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
I'm being obvious, or that's not obvious, let's make
sure we figure this out.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Let's make sure we figure this out.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
You could see that build up over a period of years.
Not just that but otherexamples, the easiest one to
cite in a conversation like thisIf I add those up and think
about what it would have cost ifevery single one of those was a
communication failure, whichpretty much it would have been
Pretty much it would have beenor could have been at least, or
(52:46):
could have been.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I can't calculate the dollar amount that it would
have been, but it could havebeen business ending for all I
know.
Definitely very helpful.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
It's been very helpful.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
I wanted to have this conversation.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
And helpful for me.
I wanted to have thisconversation and helpful for me.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
I wanted to have this conversation and it really came
out to me I was expecting If wehad had this conversation
separately and then we said, oh,can we have it again on the pod
.
It wouldn't have been nearly asinteresting the second time
around, and that happens in alot of podcasts.
I like this experiment.
I think I will do it more.
I want to have fewer the secondtime around, and that happens
in a lot of podcasts.
So I like this experiment.
I think I will do it more.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
I want to have fewer conversations like oh, this
should have been a podcastepisode.
I want to have more like hey,let's save this.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
You know there might be something.
I'm pretty sure you somecertain.
You know there might besomething lost, like you know
some certain details youcouldn't feature, you didn't
want to record and stuff likethat.
We could save that for thefuture to some stuff in the
email that obviously you use,sort of Whether we're here on a
higher level of detail, but Ithink it not as much detail.
But I think this experiment wasinteresting.
(53:54):
I would really give it thought.
If we can solve the languagething, I think it's, but that's
something that I think it's, butthat would be irresponsible.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
I think it's Just do it around this size.
It would be irresponsible notto do it around this size.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
Thank you for having me.
Thank you very much, sure.
Thank you for having me.
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