When does company culture break? with Greg Scown (TextExpander)

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.

Transcript

Episode Introduction with Greg Scown

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to Life on Mars. I'm Alex, CEO and founder of MarsBase, and in this episode we bring you Greg Scown, co-founder of TextExpander, who's been previously on the podcast a few episodes ago, who was also a startup brand in one of our very last events ever, and this time around we invite him over to discuss redefining company culture how they did it at TextExpander, but more so because we are doing it right now on Marspace as 30 people. Right now we are redefining, we're fine-tuning our company culture because we believe this is a turning point for the company. And he reached out to me when he read an issue of my newsletter when I was talking about this, and said like look, let's have this conversation on the podcast. I don't want to do it first in person and then repeat it again on a podcast episode, because most of the times it doesn't like have the same feeling and I was going to regret it. So I said, like let's just have this conversation on an episode. Let's record it the first time. We have it to be more organic, more natural.

Speaker 1 1:04

So this is an experiment. I hope you like it. I think it came out really good. So, without further ado, let's jump right into this episode. Welcome.

Speaker 2 1:20

Welcome, Greg.

Speaker 1 1:21

Thank you for having me Good morning. Good morning, we have a bank holiday here, yet we decided to record this episode. Thank you for reaching out to that newsletter I sent, which you kindly replied to, and I said look, I want to have this conversation. I sure do, but it's got to be on a podcast episode, because far too often lately I regret having certain conversations that should have been a podcast episode and then I'm like God damn it, this would have made a very good episode and you have them for a second time. They're not nearly as good, and so this time we're doing it. How are you feeling about it?

Speaker 2 2:03

I'm feeling great.

Speaker 1 2:06

Want to give some context. I launched this personal newsletter six months ago. It's called Founder to Founder and you're one of the biggest fans of the newsletter. I should add Religiously. Every second newsletter you're answering with your thoughts, which I'm very grateful for and that gives me, you know, more motivation to keep writing. And the other day I was at a Seed Rocket event with all the mentors of Seed Rocket and we had the usual kind of conversations we have with our founders, and one of them is hey, you know, we had this cultural problem when we hit a certain amount of scale and, coincidentally, I was having these thoughts because at Mars Space we just hit 30 people and I'm like well, I think our culture made it this far and we need to redefine it. And I wrote this issue of the newsletter and you answer with a few thoughts that, if you want to comment on them, we can build up from there.

Speaker 2 3:05

Sure. So I did answer with some thoughts and I think that the main thought was that around this size we did something at Texas Mentor that was really helpful and that was we engaged a fellow who did communication classes and so we actually had the entire company do communication classes. And if I had not done that, or if we had not done that, I think that we would have been a far worse company. I mean, we were all remote At the time. We had those classes, we were 35 people and they gave us a common language and they gave us some super shortcuts. So I think my favorite among the shortcuts is be obvious, and it's a really, really, really short phrase, but the notion is that essentially, anytime that you're communicating, it's okay to say more and you will not be penalized for essentially going over additional detail or saying something in extra time so that everyone that you're communicating with is on the same page. And it even gave us a shorthand to say I am being obvious and you know barrel on.

Defining Company Culture at Key Milestones

Speaker 1 4:23

So you know, we had this trick and a couple of others, and I think that made a lot of difference Up until then. What was the company called? What was the company called? Yeah, so we've got to go back in history a little bit. So in 2013,.

Speaker 2 4:31

We were 10 people. We were 10 people.

Speaker 1 4:34

And we got together for the first time all in person, at Macworld, san Francisco. Literally prior to that, we had never all been in the same room at the same time and then, in 2016,. We did the pivot to the text expander at SAS.

Speaker 1 4:50

And in 2017, we had 12 people and we kind of passed the pivot. And we kind of passed the pivot and Maya, who was the product manager for text expander, said okay, philip and Greg, if we don't define our culture and hire our culture, then we aren't going to be a company that I want to work at in the not too distant future, and we were bowled over a bit. We were incredibly grateful for her feedback, but also like oh.

Speaker 2 5:15

God.

Speaker 1 5:17

We seriously have work to do. This is very, very important. This is very, very important. So we did, so we put together a list. So we put together a list of things new hires to have, new hires to have qualities and um we came up with six. We came up with we wanted to be honest. We wanted to be honest, personable, positive, smart and reliable. Smart and reliable. The things that were the things we set to actually we set to actually building that into the hiring process, building that into the hiring process.

Speaker 2 5:45

And essentially the people who interviewed someone graded them on those characteristics. And so if we had somebody who interviewed, and even if they were the most amazing, candidate for the job, but they were not personable or they talked about how disorganized they were and how they had a lot of trouble with that.

Speaker 1 6:09

That was kind of an immediate no.

Speaker 2 6:10

That was kind of an immediate no.

Speaker 1 6:12

No offense to the person involved, but in terms of building a culture, in terms of collecting people who matched what we needed that was something that we started to do.

Speaker 2 6:24

That was something that we started to do. It's more or less around the size of people that they say company culture is defined by the first 10 hires. I disagree a little bit.

Speaker 1 6:35

In our case, that might be confirmation bias.

Speaker 2 6:38

Confirmation bias, of course, but in our case our company culture was defined from the get-go as something very intentional by my co-founders and I and we thought look, it's going to be us and we draw inspiration from companies like Pocket Buffer and companies like that, which, at the time, for an agency, didn't really make much sense.

Speaker 2 6:59

It was kind of like a startup-y thing to do in Spain, but we were always set out to do. But we were always set out to do for me right, things for me right. Uh, we decided to define a company culture that was not great, good, not great, but it worked for us. And then hires, the first 10 hires, I don't think they really find it. Further, define it further. We fine-tune it we fine-tune it down the line, down the line, maybe in year three or something like year four, something like that.

Speaker 2 7:28

Because, look, english isn't our native language, and so maybe we had some things that were explicitly stated very obviously, or a couple of them were redundant. We had stuff like less is more, quality over quantity, remote first optimize for remote, give back to the community and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 7:51

We had way too many items, and then we decided to shorten that list a little bit.

Speaker 2 7:56

I don't think. But I don't think, Not because of them right. Not because of them right. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus. I don't think our hires, I don't think our hires come true to the company culture.

Speaker 1 8:07

Maybe because we actually didn't talk that openly about the company culture we did only talk about a couple of items which were being specialized against being a generalist specifically, working in European rail and not doing all of the other technologies.

Speaker 2 8:28

The other one is less is more, so simply respect them. But the rest they sort of like they were floating around the company in the presentations on the website. I think they were not even on the website. We didn't do a great job.

Speaker 1 8:45

Some of these things permeated into the company culture. Now that we are 30, we're like first. I realize a couple of things.

Communication Training for Remote Teams

Speaker 2 8:53

First I realize a couple of things. First, company culture is not on the website. What the fuck? The second is I'm pretty sure nobody from our employees could recite the company culture from memory, and I think that's my fault.

Speaker 1 9:11

So, given that we have reached this point and we're going to have this conversation about hey, what should we do with company culture?

Speaker 2 9:17

It's very good that you shared that. It's very good that you shared that. It's more or less coincides with initial company culture, initial company culture. Redefine or establish or cement that by size 10 and then 30 and then 30. Something else in your case was 35. Um, like how many years?

Speaker 1 9:36

why, like how many years?

Speaker 2 9:37

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 9:48

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 everybody outside of denver. We were outside and uh, and we had the qualities for new hires, the qualities for new hires that we had created people on but not talked about much and so we essentially did a survey of everyone talking with those values, sort of in the background, trying to see, okay, can we distill this further so that, as you said, so that everyone knows it, so it's easy to remember.

Speaker 1 10:27

You wanted everyone in the company to know this is it, and so we're hoping to get it down to a few fewer items and the result of that was accountability, 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 knows them.

Speaker 2 10:43

Everyone in the company knows them. Philip took to having a slide at the end of every monthly company meeting with those four things 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, really wanted to ensure that everybody knew that this is where we were coming from and that if you were making a decision, these could guide your decision. These could guide your decision. So you're making a decision that was hostile to the customer. Hostile to the customer, that's not 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, when your teammates freezing out, when you're tired because you know 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 we did in the middle. It sounds like maybe where you're at, maybe where you're at. This is a good exercise because you've got sort of your list of things that you've been advertising on your website. You've been advertising on your website In your documents and in your description of the company you have pieces of this, I think, pieces of this, I think.

Speaker 2 11:51

And so involving the whole team in crafting where you're at and where you're at and where you might go might be a helpful exercise. How much do you think this?

Speaker 2 12:03

is affected by both of our companies being remote, because one of the challenges of being remote companies is that the bonding between the teammates takes more time. The company culture is sort of loser and I don't think we have experienced any singular difficulty by this fact. But I think that we could be more cohesive as a team, as a company culture, if we were not remote. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. Hence my question Did you think that 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 establishing values was very important. That's something that on you like, on you like, oh, yeah, that this happens because we're yeah, no, definitely, and we felt that it's not important and that's a little bit of a company. And then the following step of the following communication classes doing communication classes. It was necessary. It was necessary as we got bigger. One other thing occurred in the middle. One other thing occurred in the middle, which is Maya again, huge credit to her said okay, a bunch of the people who are joining the company are great people and match our values, but they have come to us from toxic environments.

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 with their peers or their bosses. And one of the reasons that they chose us is that their personality fit the values but not their lived work experience, and so this actually really was the seed to get into the communication classes for example in a prior company. If someone asked a question, then they might appear incompetent, you know, at Smile and 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 to each other, talk to each other, and we managed to manage it as it worked, but to talk to each other, about to each other about how these things work, how these things work, how they work out, how they work our environment, in our environment, how that might be a little different, how that might be a little different than what they had experienced prior it is a good point and it is a good point, and don't I? I don't think we want to go down the rabbit. We want to go down the rabbit culture, feet versus culture at that, because I think that that's.

Speaker 2 14:39

That's also like a good debate, to have maybe another episode when we are certainly when we are evaluating candidates I know first we, I you know first we. We do have a screening process in 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 else in the position. They submit a frontend application.

Speaker 1 15:05

It's like fuck If he or she doesn't read the job description she or he will not be reading the actual, like the feature descriptions on linear right, 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 a certain point we realized that we're only hiring the same kind of people. And I don't know how that contributes to expanding the diversity of your company, and it's very easy to fall prey to the. This can profile work for us in the past. Let's hire him or her again instead of trying something else, but I think that's something different. That's something different and entirely A little bit off topic of what I wanted to cover here today.

Speaker 1 15:58

I wanted to go deeper maybe into this process bringing somebody external to the company.

Speaker 2 16:07

Consultant, slash coach, whatever you want to call it. Because for me, the first reaction to this I'm always very skeptical of consultant coaches or coaches, because I think that most of them they have a very bad reputation because a large portion of these people they just do an okay job or a subpar job and they give bad reputation to the rest.

Speaker 1 16:33

It's kind of like an agile coach. It's kind of like an agile coach. I'm pretty sure there's somebody who's a great agile coach, and brings a lot of time.

Implementing Values Through Hiring Practices

Speaker 2 16:40

All of the agile coaches I've met in my entire life Potion, right, all of the I shall 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, they don't have the best reputation and not a place in their job. It's not a place their job just because a lot of people just do a mediocre job and that kind of like permeates into so I'm very, I'm very skeptical about this, but I'm open to the idea.

Speaker 2 17:08

Can you give some details to? How did you get in touch with this 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 trying to do something different and we landed doing something that worked out well so what we started with was at that same offsite in.

Speaker 1 17:34

Denver we did like a personality profile. It wasn't Myers-Briggs, it was some other thing. So we all ran a book together that had it was neither, it was something else. It wasn't Myers-Briggs, it was some other thing. So we all read a book together. So we all read a book together that had this the Enneagram. The Enneagram. It was neither, it was something else, but it's the same thing else. And so there were seven categories 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 of sales somewhere came in and helped with this, because it's helpful to have people who are not Philip and I leading the workshop, 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 similar personalities.

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 necessarily that we go done this, that we probably had done this for a reason, and it was working for us, so it was not necessarily urgent that we go change that what we found was more urgent was that we ensured that everyone we did have was communicating well and the other thing that forced that is that over the following year we grew from 20 to 35 people to put 15 people on board.

Speaker 1 19:10

We did onboarding for all the people. We should probably talk about that later, but that's something that's important and then we realized we really needed communication skills, and so we cast around so just as you do for your lawyer or your accountant or your accountant.

Speaker 2 19:24

You ask the people that you know who do they know, who are experts in the field and who 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 similar size. 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 the expert the other thing was we structured the other thing was we structured so ultimately, over the course of the year, we spent the course of a year, we spent five figures expenditure for the company. But we started with a pilot a class that was maybe, I think, three hours, with everyone in the 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't remember I think the deal was that we got. I think the deal was that we got to do the one that we didn't have an obligation, but that we didn't have an obligation to follow here, uh. However, at the outset when we established the pilot when we established the pilot, we also established 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 paid trial, that it was a paid trial, that was a good business model, in our opinion, for someone who was doing this, for someone who was doing this. Don't give it away for free. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense.

Addressing Remote Work Communication Challenges

Speaker 2 20:59

Give us one skill. Give us one skill For a reasonable price A reasonable. Give us one skill for a reasonable price, followed by a whole program that ultimately turned out to be worth doing. How much time did you have to allocate for that? As a former employee of big companies, where I perceive that we were spending maybe not enough time in soft skills training. Yet when we were doing trainings they were pretty useless Basic stuff.

Speaker 1 21:35

Basic stuff. Like email security or PowerPoint 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 at Deloitte 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 to me because it doesn't apply to me. Therefore, wasting time and therefore when a new training, you're always looking at it because it's like, oh yeah, another hr and uh, maybe that one is, and uh, maybe that one is interesting, but your barriers are up, right, and so, um, as a founder now, as a founder now, I'm like, should I be pushing these kind of things to 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 thought through because it's a smaller group of people.

Speaker 2 22:41

Smaller group of people. It's very specific to what we do. It's very specific to what we do. We don't have nearly the rotation that these big companies have, so maybe this is something that we could package and just put something very interesting for the company. Yeah, I understand from the perspective of developers like, oh yeah, yeah, another training, oh yeah, another training, even if it's the first one we do at MarksMate.

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 is develop. So, as a founder, how did you approach this? Sure, I think we approached it with honesty. We approached it with honesty, so we started with. This is with a common perception of this type of thing.

Speaker 1 23:20

And we said we, as the founders, are accountable. If we do this three-hour pilot and everyone hates it, or we have a ton of negative feedback or we got nothing out of it it's over, it's done, it's over, no problem.

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 get something out of it.

Speaker 1 23:47

We, collectively, can get something out of it and if so, then yeah, we'd like you on board. For the rest, we'd like you on board for the rest If we're getting something out of it, if we'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 calendar with trainings or additional requirements, additional requirements we're out to solve a specific problem a lot of times, in a lot of times, in a company of 35 people, wires get crossed. Wires get crossed fail to communicate 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 at their job, not because of any particular fault, of their own particular fault, but collectively, but collectively we didn't have the tools that we needed we had identified someone who we had identified someone who could help us build those tools and how much time did you and how much time did you?

Speaker 2 24:40

And how much time did you when you were?

Speaker 1 24:45

The first trial period right that you said it was a three-hour session, and then 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, or to 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 to this, but if I remember correctly, I think it was roughly quarterly. I think it was roughly quarterly.

Speaker 1 25:27

And it was roughly four to six hours, and it was roughly four to six hours and it was the whole team, and it was the whole team. So really we spent a day, a quarter, we spent a day, a quarter, a day. And then we did another thing which 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're managing. How do you help people align on this? So if you encounter an instance where someone's not communicating well and it's obvious to you and maybe obvious to people around them how do you help them do better? Essentially, a combination of leading through example and for lack of a better term defect resolution, but once a day per quarter doesn't seem like very much to me. It could be a day off or a company retreat, something like that. Customers are largely unaffected.

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 day per week during the six-week period. Wow, that wouldn't be effective. Let's begin with 20% reduction of 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 that we don't work, maybe in a size of like nothing to break, your customer 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 it would 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 a second annual, because that would have been a nice in-person component that matched the program that we were doing. But I don't think we would have done 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 complications derived from being remote, doing this kind of course remotely, I don't think it really helps. I understand that. But I understand that maybe this is the way to approach it.

Speaker 1 27:58

But maybe the real difficulty here is for the leader of the training, saying hey, 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're not solving anything and the results will not get him. How did you measure the impact from this? Was there some sort of KPIs there, 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, training surveys to gauge people's satisfaction with the survey but also 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 where you 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 got one survey with zero examples and 34 surveys with at least one and 20 surveys with two or more, and so that was a good hint of okay, this is working, and we were worried about that. We were worried about that. We were like, okay, we're going to ask this and nobody's going to write anything, then what are we going to do?

Speaker 2 29:13

But it turned out that asking fell into the category of be obvious, asking fell into the category of be obvious, and answering worked really well and told us what we needed, so we didn't really have to work a lot harder at figuring out whether it worked or 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 that maybe you have to consider that you probably have, or you do them half rotation. You do them half rotation, if I remember correctly, in your company, like they were staying for long.

Onboarding Processes and Culture Integration

Speaker 2 29:51

I don't know how that affected. I don't know how that affected Having people with long tenures at the company they are usually not as engaged as people who have been recently hired that they just want to display extra motivation. They want to prove themselves. They want to always be responsible. People will be like 70 years into a company like, yeah, they do a great job, 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, it doesn'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 really matter like, for instance, on friday.

Speaker 2 30:27

On fridays, every week, we send an internal poll asking for people to share the highlights. It can be personal, it can be work, it can be personal, it can be both. And, uh, we see that some people are very consistent with this. They have been doing this for seven years, something like that. Other people, especially like the 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 they're disengaged with this. So therefore, the problem onto the new one hires, because they're saying like oh, these people don't do it right, then why should I right? Did you see any difference between? Did you see any difference between these people with longer tenures and those recently hired?

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 to serve as the example to the other folks, because if they did, their lives would be better, and if they didn't, their lives would effectively be worse. They knew by the time that we were doing this how important it was, so it wasn't that hard to get them engaged.

Speaker 1 31:27

Also to Aaron's credit. He is the master of the Zoom breakout room. I mean, I've never seen Zoom breakout rooms used to greater effect and also he was perfectly comfortable using and requiring online tools. So we were doing job booms and we were doing things in the breakout rooms using tools that work well for remote companies. So I think that engagement wasn't difficult, because leading by example was important and teamwork was important, and then I also think that his expertise in engaging people just in general was infectious.

Speaker 1 32:13

It worked well for anyone who'd been around for a long time I think he was used to going into an organization where there were veterans and there were new people.

Speaker 2 32:23

And bridging. That was important. And how about the language? Because as a company you were promoted. You had people all over the globe for those who were spanning nine time zones. I remember you saying, and so therefore 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 the language, especially when you know there's a modern language in the company.

Speaker 2 32:52

And then you want to centralize everything there, right, in our case, we have English first, but the reality is like everybody lives in Spain or Portugal, so therefore it's kind of like a lot of Spanish and Portuguese guys struggling sometimes with the I. You can speak Spanish, but at the same time you know everything is in English. But if we were to conduct these kind of sessions, with somebody like Aaron, we would do it in English.

Speaker 2 33:16

I'm assuming we're not a lot of people. We have a fraction of our people who sing English not the best, so I think there would be some language friction there. Did you have any problems with these or with the time zones or how these people are adapted to these?

Speaker 1 33:32

Yeah, I think the time zones were the trickiest because getting everyone to overlap, so we had one person who was in Dubai and she dutifully 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 on dates and times. We don't want this to ruin your life, 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 this great 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 you four more times. Is this okay? Did this work for you? Did this work for you? Did this work for you? And she actually was thrown hurt 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 was coming. I was completely engaged and in fact we did ask people who, in your session, felt the most engaged and she got some pretty good thumbs up from her colleagues. Not easy at 10 pm. Not easy at 10 pm. No, no, I realize, no, no, I realize. So time zones was a thing, so time zones was a thing. And then of our people at the time so 35, probably five were not native English speakers but all had significant English ability. We didn't really see that happening, but I think it would be something that you could address directly with whoever would be interested in doing this with you. This is the composition of our team.

Speaker 1 35:14

We should hit this directly on the 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 conduct this in Spanish, your Portuguese folks are kind of out of 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 or refined company culture is a soft way of admitting that it wasn't solid enough, At least in our case. Maybe I'm projecting here, but in my case it's like well, maybe we didn't do the best job or it hasn't really adapted to how the company has changed In part. It's because the company now is 11 years old, and the last time we put some touches on the company culture was 70 years ago.

Speaker 1 36:28

We've undergone the COVID crisis, the 2022 tech meltdown crisis, other market changes, technology changes, team changes, even like we have new business lines and whatnot, we're bigger as a company. Right In the meantime, we adopted ASIC and then we reverted it because it didn't work.

Speaker 2 36:45

So we've undergone several changes and I think that right now is why are we trying to fix company culture when we should be trying to fix the underlying problems instead? I don't know if that's a shared concern. Is that something that you identified as?

Speaker 1 36:58

well, or maybe I'm just projecting here. I think in our case we saw it coming and we're again kind of grateful to Maya's original thing back in the day because she really kept us thinking about okay, you're building a product, but you're also building a company. You actually have a two-part company, whether you like it or not. And so you better pay attention to 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're bringing new people on board board what's your onboarding process, 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 part of it, because, uh, every time we, every time we open a new position, we get somewhere around 300 candidates, something like that. But most of them they shouldn't be applying.

Speaker 2 38:03

Because these are kind of like the people who don't read. Oh, we only hire in Europe, or two, three hours flight distance from Barcelona, yet we have applications from all over the world, so these ones get discarded from the get-go. That's why we want to apply certain technologies here, because otherwise it's a mess, some tinkering, chat, chat, tpt, if we can do like some sort of process here, but the, the application process, but the, the application process.

Speaker 2 38:25

I'm sorry, the interviewing process is uh, it goes something along the lines first, uh, first they have a with our head of meeting with our head of people who assesses like soft skills, filling with the person, gets the feeling with the person which is like okay, could be like a good fit, slash at for the company level of languages, both languages and kind of like some expectations and general vibes right. It's more like he's bringing or get to know each other.

Speaker 2 38:58

If that is successful if she deems the oh there's potentially, oh, there's potentially hireable then moves forward to the second part of the process, which is a call with our cto. That's it, and that's it like we really want to keep it simple, because I think this is, keep it, company culture. Let's keep it simple because I think this is company culture. Let's keep it simple.

Speaker 1 39:21

I strongly believe that tech interviews are exaggerated in most cases and they're full of bullshit.

Speaker 2 39:30

You know, I've had several friends who are interviewing for Amazon for Twitch for Google. Whatever, they have a full week of eight long sessions of eight hour long sessions so we wanted to keep it really short, so it could be as short as hours, two hours right, one with ellie, one out of people, one with chavis, if there is some doubt.

Speaker 2 40:04

If there is some doubt, I jump in. 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 is more 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 my and 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, between the first view and interview, final and the final decision one week one week tops.

Speaker 1 40:35

Two weeks tops and I think that's too much. But sometimes you know also calendar 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, onboarding is 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 the we 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 like everything in the company section. But there's the section on the first 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 the processes, with all the processes, documents and stuff like that, tools and stuff like that then you meet people like the two of the three founders, two of the three founders, so my other co-founders because they're directly more involved in the project, so one of them, the the CTO.

Speaker 2 41:40

did you see about the technology? Or if the person we hire is more on the management side, then it's with Jordi, the COO, first to talk about relationship with the team, relationship with the customers, reporting tools and so on. Then meet the people in your project, then meet the people in your project and at the end of the day talk with me. Right kind of like questions you have, or maybe last questions you have, or maybe the day after.

Speaker 2 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, you know other, you know things you might be things you might be wondering about, and that's it, but yeah, and that's it, but yeah, it's usually very back they first days, so we like to talk. It's great, so you have great. So you find on the boarding process. Find on boarding process. Do you go through, do you go companies in the corporate values in the course of that?

Creating Decision-Making Autonomy in Teams

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 that we discuss in the hiring process. Right, that's part of the first in trouble the first interview with Ellie and also the first talk and the onboarding process. We do talk about the, the I don company. I don't know, I don't know If I'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 some examples.

Speaker 2 43:10

Right In my case, because I'm most of the time being more reactive to the questions 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 to the CEO of the company. You know, when you see a rabbit flashed by the flashlight of a giant truck on the road. They're like this, flashed by the giant truck on the road, and so they're. They're like this, and I don't want to force anything but one of the ways to kind of like soothe the conversation.

Speaker 1 43:47

It's talking about the company values, right? So that's something that I I definitely 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 have people wondering. In a lot of the cases, we hire people 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 the company? How well do you know the company? Do you want me to?

Speaker 2 44:22

go. Oh no, no, I think I know everything because I've been listening to the podcast. I've read the entire blog since 2014. Stuff like that and those cases I might forgo these.

Speaker 1 44:33

I don't know if that's the right thing to do, but I might forgo because, like maybe that's too obvious.

Speaker 2 44:39

But yeah, it's a good zero. We should be probably zeroing in on a little bit more. Does someone go over? Does someone go over who's at the 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 describe now, I'm gonna describe here and what they do people who are here and what they do.

Speaker 2 44:56

Funnily enough, in our funOUGH in our last hire, he did bring up something very interesting. That in our handbook there was a 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 the conversation, when we first wrote the handbook, it was a guide for the first day, so the who's who is like who you're going 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 on right 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 personalities are in that fair because I think that's part of the magic of 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 like oh, the company's a bunch of introverts Mostly a bunch of introverts.

Speaker 2 46:06

I don't want to say it, stuff like that. I don't want to say it, it's not fair.

Speaker 1 46:11

But also we've got a session on the website. Everybody, you have everybody in the company. Also we have a very nice thing to discover the rest of the team.

Speaker 2 46:20

First off, first friday, first friday welcome coffee. We have every friday because every 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 the martian tapers going on on thursday's lunch time where somebody discusses like technology, like that's like a small showcase of technology. Showcase of technology, a technology like a small workshop, a small showcase of a technology project, kind of like a side project they've been working 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 also internally there's a document where you can go and find a profile of everybody write their own profiles. 10 things you should know about me.

Speaker 1 47:11

And that is really fun to read.

Speaker 2 47:13

Nice. I mean it sounds like you've got the sort of rolling traditions aspect of company are down 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 like open a bomb here's like I don't think company culture are kind of like company culture and like gives you the tools to make decisions on your own. I'd be, and I think that is where being because we're remote again, we're remote, hard remote company and I think we have been insistent enough of how to make decisions on their own.

Speaker 2 47:49

That's why I'm saying we're struggling with team size, because unless we really equip the people properly with the company culture that they say company culture is how people behave when the founders are not in 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 in the 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't have the old, most people don't have the ownership or tools to decide, 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 and we 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 company Ownership issues in the company.

Speaker 1 48:54

Not so much. Not so much. I mean we had pretty well defined areas of expertise.

Speaker 2 49:01

Areas of expertise Even Philip and I are in specific areas, and then further down 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 at someone who was leading marketing and someone was leading sales For the most part for the entire company organization so it was pretty easy to say I'm on an engineering team, I'm on an engineering team, that type of thing, and in terms of decision making, we gave a lot of room to the people who were running a given area, because there's no way that you can do it.

Speaker 1 49:44

There's no way that you can do it as founder of a company. It's just, you don't want to get in the way of everything. These folks are good, these folks are experts at what they do, and then what we tried, in addition, was to give people time. So you know I don't know one-on-ones with the people who were doing work in areas inside the company and make sure that they had time to express. This is what's going on. These are the things that we need to make decisions about.

Speaker 2 50:17

these are the things that I'm going to defer deliberately, and so that type of stuff I don't know.

The ROI of Strong Company Culture

Speaker 1 50:23

We had a bit of a culture about how we did those things. We were heavily Google Doc-based at the time. I suppose maybe Notion would be more the kind of thing today. At the time, at the time, any time that we had a meeting with someone, we made notes and we also put an entry for the next meeting. An entry for the next meeting.

Speaker 1 50:45

And so as you're working along but before you get together again, if one of the people who participates in the meeting thinks of something, you just stick it in the document as bullet point and then when you meet you run down. I mean you'd be surprised. You'd be surprised More than enough stuff to go through at that point. And then just some open time for either catching up on what's going on in life or talking about sort of long-term vision type issues Vision type issues.

Speaker 2 51:16

That's time allowed. And why do you say I remember in 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 weave this in because at the end of the episode we always go into the most expensive fucker, and you know this because you've been 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 of confirmation 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 things that folks use are some of the catchphrases from the communication workshop. So if we did a search for obvious on Slack, there would be hundreds of instances of people using that in their 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 other examples, the easiest one to cite in a conversation like this If I add those up and think about what it would have cost if every single one of those was a communication failure, which pretty much it would have been Pretty much it would have been or could have been at least, or could have been.

Speaker 2 52:48

I can't calculate the dollar amount that it would have been, but it could have been 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 this conversation 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 we had had this conversation separately and then we said, oh, can we have it again on the pod. It wouldn't have been nearly as interesting the second time around, and that happens in a lot of podcasts. I like this experiment. I think I will do it more. I want to have fewer the second time 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 podcast episode. 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 some certain. You know there might be something lost, like you know some certain details you couldn't feature, you didn't want to record and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 53:42

We could save that for the future to some stuff in the email that obviously you use, sort of Whether we're here on a higher level of detail, but I think it not as much detail. But I think this experiment was interesting. I would really give it thought. If we can solve the language thing, I think it's, but that's something that I think it's, but that would be irresponsible.

Speaker 1 54:04

I think it's Just do it around this size. It would be irresponsible not to do it around this size.

Speaker 2 54:08

Thank you for having me. Thank you very much, sure. Thank you for having me.