Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 Get people who know what they are doing and to happen through this. Um, I think this helps you in the beginning to really make the right decisions and trust people to make the right decisions. You can't do this with just having juniors and nephew, even funny as a business, um, to make wise decisions. I think we always consciously saw have as a mature startup, um, that has been through years of experiences. And now we want to really do it right from the beginning and not high up people that need to figure it out along the way, because I think it's healthy. Yeah. You create a healthier environment. If you have people that help juniors in the future, I'll keep it at a, just starting their career with like some guidance. And I think that's, what's lacking in a lot of startups that the people that have their first job really learn from people that have been doing the stuff before. Right. And I think be conscious to say hiring senior people, and then we add on people that can learn. Um, but I think the other way round it's usually not, not really time efficient and also not a great experience for, for the team.
Speaker 1 00:01:15 Hi everyone. It's Brian here again with our next episode of sailing so far, and I'm really excited today to be talking to one of the co-founders of pitch, um, Vanessa stocks, who is their VP of people and is joining us from Berlin, this stuff, Janine, um, Vanessa is leading their team, which has distributed both, but based both in Berlin and distributed globally. And before joining pitch, of course, Vanessa was part of the wanderlust team where she helped to hire and build the core team there that saw them eventually reached exit. Vanessa, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast and thank you for making the time to speak with me. Um, how is everything going for you over in sunny Berlin today?
Speaker 0 00:01:58 Amazing. Yeah, we have a nice sunny day actually. Uh, it's a, it's a blue sky, which is unusual and, uh, we are nearing our end of the winter here and look forward to hopefully a better summer than last year.
Speaker 1 00:02:15 I think we're all looking forward to a bit of sunshine, both the real kind and the, uh, the proverbial kind we might say over the next few months. So, um, Vanessa, lovely to meet you and really looking forward to learning a bit more about you. Tell us a bit about yourself and your story, your background,
Speaker 0 00:02:31 My story. Yeah, I think my story starts actually an equitizing I always wanted to run. I always liked the creative fields and, uh, worked, uh, in an agency early on in my career and, uh, studied PR. So that was my, my background, but I was always interested in actually changing the way, how people work or like a very hierarchical system, these agencies, and always felt like there must be a future of working for all of us. That's not so traditional and I'm more progressive in which everyone can contribute, uh, to, uh, the greater good. And, uh, yeah, I kind of decided very early on that I want to continue studying and study business psychology and organizational psychology. And that has led me to doing HR and a startup because there you can actually really change the work and, uh, and change the environment for people and really establish a healthy culture. Um, because you basically start from scratch and you can, yeah. You have self organizing teams and all of these things. And, uh, yeah, so that has led me into the HR world a few years back. And that's where, yeah, I've been at, uh, the last thing 10 years now. And, uh, it's a great journey.
Speaker 1 00:03:55 Excellent. And Vanessa, tell us a little bit about the story of, of co-founding pitch. If I understand correctly, you guys co-founded, there was seven of you that came together from wanderlust to, to create pitch. Is that correct? Oh, eight, sorry. You plus seven. Sorry.
Speaker 0 00:04:14 Yeah, it's fine. Don't worry. Uh, yeah, it's a unique setup and we all, yeah, we were all working together and decided to do this again. And, uh, we had just fully trusted each other. We know each other's strengths and weaknesses, and we're just like really certain that we going to give it a try one more time, Christian, Isto he? Yeah, he's been the CEO back then at vanillas and he basically just reached out to all of us and we decided, yeah, let's do this. And um, yeah, we have a very unique setup. We are basically different. Everyone has a different set of skills and specialties. Um, we have, uh, four different tech. Co-founders one of them as the CTO and the others, uh, yeah, very special <inaudible> and then the design co-founder, uh, business administration co-founder I, me doing recruiting and everything people related on the CEO and it's been working amazing and it helped us really taking right decisions early on and really having a lot of people with their specialist skill set, um, at the table and, uh, helping us to make the right decisions when it comes to product when it comes to tech decision or just business decisions.
Speaker 0 00:05:30 And yeah, I think it's a unique setup, but I can only recommend that everyone
Speaker 1 00:05:35 And I have to ask, like, if I hear that you say that there's eight of you who are kind of working together trying to make decisions together, trying to create a plan together. Does that ever get a little bit tricky with eight voices in the room?
Speaker 0 00:05:50 I mean, yeah, even more right. Um, I mean we have a leadership team that's like also very senior with OSA from Spotify was our CEO right now. And then, um, VP sales and all this, we have a strong leadership team. Um, but I think we are having healthy debates, but we also trust each other and our domains to make a call in the end. You know, we would have healthy debates and try to democratically Willie, uh, involve everyone as much as possible. And that just helps you to make informed decisions. But in the end, I mean, in the end we have a CEO he's making a call sometimes, or we have domain owners that can make the call in the end, but I think it's important that everyone gets heard or lots of people with different perspectives. And, uh, so in the end, I think it's a unique setup and, and it only works because we have people like Alessio who, and the inmates, the call or, or yeah, me when it comes to recruiting or in other areas,
Speaker 1 00:06:53 It sounds like it must be loads of fun and particularly, um, enriching, I suppose, to have such a strong group of leaders who are, who are working together, particularly given you guys have known each other for a time already, um, with pitch what's the mission and vision of pitch when you guys aiming for the problem you're having. So I have not recently, but I have been connected with you since a little while back now, which leads me to believe that I was using it in my previous company. So
Speaker 0 00:07:25 Yeah. And I can only recommend it, the product improved so much since like the last one. That's crazy. Um, yeah. So I think since you already played around with it, um, we are building like the next generation of presentation. So for us, our goal is basically to really redefine our people work on presentations, share them, present them and to have a whole presentation suite that covers all aspects, but really redefines the whole behavior around how you create a presentation and how you can, um, involve people and collaborate on it, but also integrate data, um, how you can share it with your client or your customers, um, how you presented in front of an audience. All of these pods, we feel are ready to be changed. And, and, and, um, when we started the company three years ago, now we just saw a big opportunity to really, um, go after that market. And I mean, there are lots of interesting products coming out nowadays, the technical parts of the vision that we have, but we still see it more holistically. And, um, really don't see anyone who's tackling all the bits that we are trying to solve right now,
Speaker 1 00:08:44 If there is one thing in the professional world that probably needs a bit of a revolution, I reckon it might be this. So you guys have definitely touched on something that's really, which would, which would explain why you've grown so quickly and scaled so quickly as well. So you started with the eight of you and you're now at about 90 as the person heading up, sorry. Oh, okay. Sorry. You're 110 now SunGard Ava Molson. We wrote down these notes last week, but, um, tell us a bit more about what your approach has been to scaling. How have you grown the team? What sort of steps? What, what kind of, um, building blocks did you put in place to scale the team so quickly or effectively from eight to two? 110?
Speaker 0 00:09:31 Um, yeah, I think it's a progress. So since, uh, the beginning of the company, we dabbled the team every year, so 2,500. Um, and, uh, I think we always made the conscious decision at the beginning to hire really senior people. Um, because this really, I mean, this does make the hiring speed faster, um, because it's definitely more, more difficult, but I think you would just create a bit yeah. A bigger bandwidth internally to get on more people in the future. So I think, yeah, we basically invested in great leaders, uh, individual contributors and, uh, high-end the rights he level at some point. And that helped us making the organizational adjustments to really scale up, um, in the way how you organize the teams. Right. We, we decided to have cross-functional teams and in which always a designer and engineer RingLead as working and, um, so fast, it was always important to build a very collaborative environment, but, um, to avoid hierarchies and up until a hundred, this was like working out really smoothly.
Speaker 0 00:10:47 Um, I think we also, now we kind of changed the organization, organizational structure a little bit, um, that should help us to go to 200, hopefully, but I think our underlying principles are always to have a very collaborative working approach in which people can choose how they want to work and on what we want to work on. Obviously it's always constrained. Uh, it's kind of, depending on our focus areas, of course, but we want the team to be involved in the bigger decisions. And, um, I think, uh, yeah, does involvement of the team, but also yet communicating clearly as leaders has helped us to get this car. I would say
Speaker 1 00:11:36 It seems like you have a really solid core of leadership leaders in your business and that you've added to those, that group of leaders over time. You mentioned wanting to hire senior people. Is that an approach that you've seen or learned before, or is that something that you brought to the table here pitch, um, your, your, your approach?
Speaker 0 00:11:56 Um, I think so when we started pitch, all of us has been had of various startups before, and then we all have seen, what's been working, what's not. And I think one thing that we wanted to do, right with BSA also having the necessary funding is really, um, get people on board who know what they are doing and to spend through this, um, I think does helps you in the beginning to really make the right decisions and trust people to make the right decisions you can't do as with just having juniors. And if you need to use money as a business, um, to make rice assertions, I think we always consciously, so I'll ask to have as a mature startup, um, that has been through years of experiences and all we want to really do it right from the beginning and not high up people that need to figure it out along the way, because I think it's healthy.
Speaker 0 00:12:51 Yeah. You create a healthier environment. If you have people that help juniors in the future, people that are just starting their career with like some guidance. And I think that's, what's lacking in a lot of startups that the people that have their first job really learn from people that have been doing this stuff before. Right. And I think be conscious to say, yeah, hiring senior people. And then we add on people that can learn. Um, but I think the other way round it's usually not, not really time efficient and also not a great experience for, for the team.
Speaker 1 00:13:28 And you probably ended up losing people along the way as well, very early on, um, as nanowire has experienced, um, you mentioned just now Vanessa, that you've done this before. And so have many of the people that you're working with, there's plenty of guides and articles and experiences that people have had about how to start up a company and how to scale that company. Is there anything that you've seen or read that you think is just a big myth about how you should approach scaling up to a company?
Speaker 0 00:14:01 Um, I think it, I think that, yeah, it, as a trend of saying you have to a higher, fast and higher are not performing. I think, um, I think first you have to hire slow and really find the people that you need and really make conscious decision on who you hire and why you're high enough, then you don't need to fire fast. I don't think it's a sustainable mindset to always react fast and always make these lights. You're going to hire a hundred people in the next three months. And then those people will have to be let go one day. Um, and, uh, so I think from my side, I prefer, if you want to scale a healthy business, you have to Willy start like really consciously on making a call on how you want to hire and what type of culture you want to create does only works. If you hire consciously in the beginning and Willy Quaid, a hiring plan and a core culture with the people you want to work with, and then you can slowly scale this up and maybe even faster. But I think you need to invest in hiring the right people first and not firing them because
Speaker 1 00:15:16 Yeah, I've, I've had, so it's interesting that you should say that because I've done this podcast with a couple of different people now, and I've actually heard people say that that was their top tip. You know, you should hire fast on Firefox. And I think, um, again, to sort of draw back on that point that you made earlier, this is not the first time you've done this. You, you guys have done this before and you have been through these experiences before. So, you know, hopefully for those people who are listening today, you know, they're hearing somebody who, who, who, who has done it more than once. And, and Pat learn from those, um, experiences in the past and being very reactive. Like you say, it's not a sustainable way to grow a company. Um, I'm super interested, obviously the last year has been crazy for everybody. We're all working remotely. Many people who've had to adapt to that very quickly loads of people going through personal issues, as well as professional ones. How have you guys kept your people engaged and motivated, um, over the last year and, and through the growth of pitch?
Speaker 0 00:16:17 Yeah, I think it was a tough year personally and professionally for everyone on this globe at pitch. We even launched our product last year. So it was another layer of complexity for everyone in the team, but I think everyone has survived and done well. And we gave everyone off three weeks for free, uh, after Christmas. So everyone got to relax a little bit. Um, so I think for us, it was always first and potted to be empathetic with the team and with the situation. Um, and what it's asked to everyone, I think it was a time where we consciously said, okay, you guys take the time. You need take a break and you need to be with your family. Um, the workload was adjusted to the team. I think the expectations were a bit lower, but after few weeks we also said, okay, you're gonna be gonna need to launch this product this year.
Speaker 0 00:17:13 So let's get all focused again. And, uh, but then also to Willie, I think the most important thing as leaders is to be empathetic to the team and the situations you have in your team, but then to also be clear on what's expected and what we as a team need to ship. Um, and to just have open conversations around this, um, we supported the team yet with extra time off, we offered a therapist, um, that people could get for themselves. We, um, yeah. Try to adjust the workload depending on the situation for the team. And, uh, yeah, I think we consciously stayed straight away, straight away from, uh, yeah. Increase like doing all these artificial team events were forced to stay online even longer and even more. And so we didn't do that. I think we just made sure people feel connected. They know where they can find their resources, but also can make breaks and take breaks and feel fine. That was more important for us.
Speaker 1 00:18:21 Okay. And at the moment, am I correct that you guys are like partly based in Berlin, but partly distributed around the world? Is that correct?
Speaker 0 00:18:31 Yeah. So since day one, we hired remote. We made some key hires very early on that were not based in Berlin and didn't want to move to Berlin and basically taught us already few years back to hire remote, but also get a remote culture and company. Um, and so when COVID hit, it wasn't really a change for us because we already had everything in place. And, um, we have people in Tel Aviv, uh, Australia, New Zealand, Canada States everywhere. And, uh, it's been amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:19:05 But how do you balance the experience? This is something we've struggled with and I've heard others have as well. How do you balance the experience for people who are based in Berlin in the kind of hub or the headquarters, if you like, and the people who aren't, how do you provide the same kind of engaging cultural experience for both groups of people?
Speaker 0 00:19:26 I think first it's important to create a kitchen, but no one is different than the others random and which no one is left out of conversations and decisions that are not made at the same place. So I think we created this rule that meetings have to always happen online. Also when you're in Berlin, you have to always be on your, um, you always have to document decisions you have to share and transparently, uh, have these conversations on Slack and to avoid people feeling left out. But then also I think it's important. Long-term for us to really think about longterm remote strategy and how we want to go about that. I guess there is a future where you basically say, Hey, everyone can use the office. It's not mandatory, but it's like a working place that it can, that people can use. But then also you need to support your, your remote desk with having maybe a cohort rocking a bastard where they can connect with people. Um, but then also to invest in company events once or twice a year where everyone can get together, um, yeah. Stuff like that.
Speaker 1 00:20:33 I think it's something that I've been hearing that people have been struggling with is you have some people who are based, let's say over here that based in London and the people who work in London perhaps have a very different experience for those people who might be based it remotely outside of London. And, and, um, I'm sure that people would be interested to hear your perspective there on how to balance between the two and provide, like you say, I think a great tip there is that even if you're in Berlin, you still do the meeting on zoom so that everybody has the same experience of participating in the main thing. I've certainly been in that position myself long before we even knew what Corona was. So, um, good to hear that. Um, Vanessa, uh, finally a question, uh, I guess more about the leadership team and how you guys work together. Is there any rituals, any practices that you guys have put in place to communicate, to engage with that diverse populations spread around the world?
Speaker 0 00:21:33 Nothing that wasn't in place before. It was always, um, I mean we have very open channels. Um, we are doing like these happiness surveys every six months in which we asked the Timo, how are things going? What should we improve as a leadership team? And we always tried to act on these things pretty quick, but like having open Slack channels, having constant, like we have a team bulletin that send out on Friday in which everyone, every team can present what they worked on this week. But also we share all the notes of every board deck with the board meetings after they happened with the team, we share leadership updates, we have open Slack channels. We try to, we even had like a company or like a management offsite in which we invited all the team leads and heads, which made it to 28 people. We mowed zoom, offsite worked out amazingly. Um, yeah, it was, and it was fun for everyone. Uh, um, so yeah, no, it's, uh, I think, um, those are the things that are actively in place. We don't do all hands where we try to foster a culture around communication. And so having more routine of status updates and Slack written updates, um, rather than always these in person meetings, because those are very hard to schedule. If you have a remote company, right? You have someone in New Zealand, it would never really work for them to participate
Speaker 1 00:23:19 As someone who is born in that part of the world. We were just told we had to stay awake until very, very late if we wanted to join the meetings, because that was my experience back before we even had same. But I know now definitely the asynchronous communication is definitely the case. Um, but it's a one final topic before we close. Um, I know that you're really, really passionate about organizational design and it's, it's the thing that, you know, you've been working on previously one, the lesson today at pitch. How did you go about building the organization structure, your organizational structure for pitch? What was your approach?
Speaker 0 00:23:55 I mean, it's first a team effort, um, with like the leadership team. So the team leads and the people in the teams, um, and I think fast, um, as partners and was always important to really build a structure. That's not T Rocky Hill and, um, in which everyone is hurt and kids, like they have a impact on the product and the business and, uh, to really like avoid like a title game. Um, I think we have titles. I mean, it's just also helpful at some point to have titles, but it's more about what they actually mean and how people are still able to be involved right beyond that titles. And I think, uh, for us, um, we created a Kachin, which obviously they are team leads, uh, pillar leads. That's how we call them right now because we have different colors, but also we basically invite people for their opinion across, beyond that teams and beyond the function. So first having cross functional first functional teams, but also then, uh, involving evolving the team, um, and broader decisions and not just, uh, based on their discipline, I think that was always important for us. And I think, uh, it's been working out well. Um, let's see how scalable all that is. But, um, so far we've done a great job, I think in democratic democratizing my language today. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1 00:25:29 You preempted my question. My question was going to be, and is it working and you said it's working so far. We'll see if it's scalable. Are you nervous that it might not be scalable?
Speaker 0 00:25:41 I'm not nervous. I'm just aware that like, like building a team structure for 50 people is definite and 400 and 200. Um, so, um, by now it's working and I think it will work for another year, but let's see how, um, yeah, how we can build a healthy and sustainable culture in which everyone feels heard and, uh, feels like that impact, uh, beyond their daily work. Um, let's see how scalable that is, but I think it was also conscious and strategic decision to hire VP engineering from Spotify. Right. But if I, as always been known for progressive engineering culture and working style, so, and we made her, gave her promotion two hours, uh, being Alessio. And I think, uh, she's, uh, amazing as a leader and teaches us a lot from her experience in a past paced environment. And I think we'll be fine, but I think, um, it was always important for us to hire leaders that really believe in the same values.
Speaker 0 00:26:49 And I think it's really commendable that you're actually highlighting that you will need to review it and that it won't might not work for another year and we'll check in and, you know, that's still the direction we want to go. Um, many, many places I've worked for and even people that I've spoken to would say, you know, we put this great plan together. It's a five-year plan and this is what we gotta do for the next five years and what you need today and what you need at the end of five years could be wildly different. So it's a very, um, like calling back to the fact that this is not the first time you've done this, that, you know, what some of the hiccups that you've experienced in the past to be reviewing that on a, on a semi regular basis. I think that experience that you have a couple of closing questions now, Vanessa, and this is where it gets a little bit fun. If there was something in business that you could fix with a magic wand, one challenge, one problem that you keep coming up against that you could wave your magic wand and fix forever. What would that be?
Speaker 0 00:27:55 Um, I don't think there's one particular topic that I think that's, I think there's this one question that everyone in their remote world is asking us, how do you stay connected to humans? And I think our future will be remote even though we will have an office, but we will have to really think about how to keep the human into active component as a team, as a remote team. Right. Um, especially when you scale and you get bigger, you just have select names, not many connections to the people you work with. And I think, um, having like a, I mean, so many things you can do, we have like all these coffee chats that can people that people match up with and get to know each other. But I think, uh, I think it would be nice to have this one little recipe that says, okay, do that. And everyone knows each other and likes each other.
Speaker 0 00:28:57 That's one that I probably would, would pick as well. It's definitely a challenge that we've all adapted to or adapting to. Is there a thought or a value that you live by or some kind of slogan that you've been using in your life? Not really. I wouldn't say that I'm waking up every day, but I think I am just following my gut feeling most of the time and having this connection to, I think, feeling something and having this intuition to something is better than always having data, uh, insights. I know that being data driven and having clear numbers to base decisions on is equally important, but I think it's also important to have a clear intuition and follow this in your private life.
Speaker 1 00:29:58 Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more and hopefully a lot of the people that, um, that we work with on a regular basis would be hearing that as well. Sometimes you do have to go together. Um, and is there as a people leader as someone who's been working in the space in some pretty nifty companies for such a long time, is there any particular people leader or founder that you've worked with or know of in the, in the world that, that you would say is a particular inspiration for you?
Speaker 0 00:30:23 Um, I think I didn't meet her by ending the Netflix VPP book or a chief HR officer. Uh, she's quite inspiring. And, uh, I mean this amazing, huge, um, company, and I think, um, I wouldn't say that everything, what other HR leaders are promoting as ideas is necessarily in line with what I say, but I think I'm admiring lots of, um, people, leaders that really build these amazing, huge, really huge products. Um, and the organization around that, I think, uh, that's definitely inspiring. I think for me, it's always important to find more progressive, some progressive agile leaders that really believe in how HR can really change also the environment, but also how we as leaders should think more sustainably around the organizations we are building. I think that not many that I know that are very outspoken about different approach approaches and non-traditional ones, but I would love to meet more for sure.
Speaker 1 00:31:31 Um, and look, we'll keep trying to make contact episodes with them and you have definitely been one of them than ever. Um, I've had an absolute ball chatting with you today, so thank you very much for making the time. And I know that many people who've been listening to this series will get some real insights, um, based on your ideas. And I think you've got a particular approach based on experience and trial and error in the past that is particularly unique and particularly useful, um, for people who are, who are just starting out on this journey. So I particularly loved your point about hiring consciously about making sure that you have that head count plan and being really intentional about the people that you're trying to bring in. And, and you know, the fact that you're so passionate about that, but equally acknowledging that you may need to adapt and may need to review that in the future. So for those of you who've been listening today, that's the, that that's the bit that I've taken away from this chat. So I hope that you have to, um, Vanessa, thank you so very much for your time, and we're very excited to probably the journey that you and pitch we'll be having over the next little while. And I'm sure it will be either way a super successful one. Thank you again.
Speaker 0 00:32:38 Thank you so much for having me. It was a blast talking to you.
Speaker 1 00:32:42 Thank you.
