Category: Startups

Quipu's turning four — learnings and becoming a sales-driven SaaS company

For a startup every year is like little life, with new people, new features, new users and new challenges.

The fourth year for Quipu has been, according to co-founder and CEO Roger Dobaño, the craziest in terms of changes.

We’ve almost built an entire new engineering and design team and we’ve also built a totally new marketing team. On top of that we’ve moving over to being a sales-driven SaaS startup, not only focusing on product.

Last year when Quipu turned three years old, Roger wrote a post on working in a startup and how every year feels like a dog year, an opinion he still holds:

Every year still feels like seven, but we’re growing up to be a mature software company, and that means a new set of changes.

The radical team change

Over the last four years Quipu has slowly but steadily been growing their team as their business grew year over year.

A small development team of a few people where each team members did a little bit of everything, has grown to a full scale team, with several team members dedicated to the back-end, front-enders, a product designer and an architect.

Co-founder and CTO Albert Bellonch puts it like this:

We’ve gone from a startup that more than anything prioritized shipping product and going super-fast, to a more established tech company, where we can use more time and resources on dedicated parts of the product.

Even though the seven person development team is growing to know each-other better, Albert is happy to be able to spend more time talking with each developer:

Before I was coding every day, but now I’ve got time to talk to each team-member, how they’re doing and how they develop themselves professionally. I think that’s super important the faster we grow.

CEO Roger believes there ‘s a clear reason why they’re so happy with the new team:

In the interviews we didn’t only test their code, but more importantly, we tested their ability to think deeply about hard problems.

The reason why we chose to do these tests is that we’ve learned that you can be fast, but if you don’t think properly about the challenges you face, you’ll have many long-term problems.

Also a new sales-team has been built from scratch, with their own sales manager in place to lead the new department.

Until recently Roger was the person leading the sales effort, but being in charge of both the sales and the company as a whole becomes challenging as the company grows:

We always had a competitive advantage with our product, but our sales effort has been too slow too long, and we needed to change that.

The last months Quipu has built a four-member team of energetic sales people to bring their “friendly accounting” software to the world (and they’re looking for more energetic people)

The issues of growing up

The first years of a startup’s life it’s easy to motivate people. The team is excited to be working on something new, something that’s changing the status quo, just like Quipu’s doing in the B2B finance vertical.

But something changes when the team grows and the startup becomes more established, according to Roger:

The phase we’re in right now is one of the most demanding periods for our company. And just as our company has grown the last years, so has our team, and the relation you have with them is not as “familiar” as it used to be. Keep building a strong company culture is as important as understanding that people have lives outside our little tech bubble. I think that’s essential in continuing to grow what’s one of Barcelona’s best teams.

2017 has also been the year of international expansion and the first customers in France has now started using the Quipu product under the new name Zyfro.

Our new marketing and sales team consists of several French people, the first feedback from customers has been good, and we’re eager to see how the rest of the French market responds to the product.

He adds:

That everyone can do business on the internet is the biggest lie I’ve heard. Even though the barriers are low, like any business in order to grow fast you need a notorious product, money and relevant mission.

Quipu has a goal of raising their series A-round sometime at the start of 2018.

How Typeform is scaling their culture in hyper-growth

When your startup consists of you and your co-founder, it’s not that hard to shape the culture. Even though Typeform started with two co-founders , it has grown and in the last 18 months from 30 to 150 employees, and they have no intention to stop growing.

So how are they keeping a healthy culture? It’s not a poster on a wall, we live it, says co-CEO and co-founder Robert Munoz:

Our company culture is a product of what kind of workplace I, David (co-founder) and the first employees wanted to create when we started Typeform. We didn’t have a master plan to define our culture but we knew that a total focus on product, people and creating a collaborative place to work made sense.

Product & People first

Traditionally SaaS companies are all about product in the beginning. Robert and David have always been searching for the balance where product meets people:

We know that if we invest in both our talent and in our product at the same level, revenues will come along with it.

That’s why they have created three pillars to put people and product as top priorities:

• Business to take the market
• Innovation to be ahead of the curve
• Culture to create a great work environment

He explains that scaling culture has become more and more important with growth, as the company has been going through three different stages most startups face.

We started at (1) product phase, where it’s all about building the best fucking product. Then moved into a (2) service phase where it was all about giving our acquired users the best service possible. Now we’re at the (3)organizational stage, where building a well functioning business with different teams and functions. Here’s the focus on scaling culture maybe the most important key.

At a time when good work culture is uber important, the founders acknowledges that they’re facing challenging times as they grew from 50 to 150 employees in one year.

The magic number — 150

Oxford evolutionary psychology professor Robin Dunbar created a theory that humans only can maintain personalized relationships with 150 people, so it’s not without reason Robert says they’ve been struggling a bit with communication lately:

We are very aware that we’re crossing this magic line. Decision making based on consensus is not as effective as before and spreading information across the organization is a new challenge, so we need to add more structure in place.

The main challenge with adding structure, according to Robert, is to be efficient as an organization without killing creativity and the startup feeling.

The last year we’ve been focusing on redefining our vision, product mission and values, as this is a big part of creating alignment and improving communication and decision making.

Creating values is hard, especially if it needs to resonate with a lot people. So a while back the Typeform people sat down to draw out their company values.

First, me and my co-founder David met with the creative/content team and some other people to write a list of values that we thought made sense for our day to day. Then we published and announced the values to the company and we realized that some of the values didn’t resonate and that some others were confusing.

They needed a value revolution.

We decided to scrutinize the values with every team of the company and we realized that if you want people living the values, it’s better to make them participate so they feel more engaged and you don’t end up just hanging your values on a wall.

At the end, they threw away their first values and came together with the whole company up with a list of seven values that randomly formed the acronym: CHEF PIE.

Lunch roulette

Another key element when growing fast is making sure everyone get to know each other, no matter how big the team gets, says Robert:

Something we really focus on when growing fast is keeping founders and managers approachable, this is super important, and we are experimenting with several ways of making this happen easier.

One of the experiments is a Slack bot that matches random people for coffee breaks and lunches, so everyone gets to know each other better, also all the managers.

It’s actually been a real success. I love having coffee with people from the office I don’t know that well.

When you walk into the Typeform office in Barcelona, the first thing meeting you is the barception (bar + reception) with free drinks and coffee served by the barceptionist. There’s also free healthy lunches, more benefits than your average day can handle, and a big lofty office.

You would think that even for a company that have raised $15 million in venture capital, this kind of spending would be over the top. Robert thinks the opposite:

Somebody told me that you’ll never over-invest in people. I don’t think investing heavily in culture is expensive at all, at least in our industry. Luckily we have investors that believe in that mentality as well.

Inclusion

The co-founders Robert and David along with the management team is learning as they go in terms of growing a huge, fast-moving organization. To succeed in their mission to make their product a little more human, there’s one element they need to do perfectly.

We need to include our teams as much as we can in the shaping of our culture, and continue to spend a lot of time, effort and resources on making people challenged, happy and at home.

As they’re planning on growing the team substantially the next two years, and with an additional office opening in the US soon, the ultimate test for Typeform lies ahead of them:

As we scale the culture of the company can change a little bit, but we don’t need to freak out about that, it’s like any person’s personality, it changes. However, we want to keep building an awesome place to work. A place where people can be themselves, be heard, innovate, and do big things together.

How to boost diversity in the Spanish startup ecosystem

We wanted to use the March edition of our monthly video podcast to put focus on the brilliant women founders in our startup ecosystem. Luckily we have many to choose from in Barcelona, so we invited business angel and co-founder and CEO of B-Wom Helena Torras, co-founder of Geenapp Gina Tostand CEO and co-founder of Eelp! Nina Alastruey to discuss the status for women in tech in 2017, with a special focus on Spain and Barcelona.

Being a women is an advantage

Torras explains that being an entrepreneur, and being a woman in startups has changed a lot the last ten years. However, a decade ago, she always felt that being a woman was an advantage:

I was the only one, so when I went an event or a meeting, people remembered me. Ten years ago, all investors and entrepreneurs were men, that has changed with time, but I always saw being a women as an advantage.

Alastruey has a different approach that what it means being a woman in tech in 2017:

I think it’s super tough and very difficult. I remember being in an investor meeting with my previous startup in Silicon Valley, and one of the investors asked me what I did at the company. I said I was the CEO, and he was super surprised, he thought I worked with marketing, that’s the general conception.

Tost which founded Geenapp four years ago, said it wasn’t easy becoming an entrepreneurs, but that other women in the startup community, made it much easier:

Compared to Helena and Nina I don’t have that much experience, but when I started out it was easier because I had a network of great women entrepreneurs from Barcelona around me, and that empowered me to work even harder.

The power of diverse teams

All three entrepreneurs believe the startup ecosystem is the perfect place for women interesting in tech to start their career.

Alastruey puts it like this:

Women are incredible as they’re able to multi-task in a different way than men are capable of. For a startup that needs everyone to take responsibility, this is a skill that is in demand.

Tost, founded Geenapp together with Javier Casares and Jaime Ferre:

I have a very diverse team, and from the beginning I was always the multitasker, doing everything, and I think that’s why my more experienced team-members liked me. We started working together almost five years ago, and we’ve know raised a kid that’s kind of big.

Torras has invested in many different types of teams, but she says one thing is clear:

It’s not about having only women or having only men, all studies show that diverse teams perform better than non-diverse startups. It’s all about finding the right balance of talent, and I think a diverse team is the best way to go.

• Take a look at our other video podcasts here.

Need to prioritize networking

Even though Torras has never seen being a women as a negative thing in the startup community, she does have some advice to up-and-coming entrepreneurs:

Some founders think it’s enough to do well during working hours, but I think you need to go out and network and meet people. It’s a key to building trust with investors and other entrepreneurs.

Alastruey says there’s still challenges also in these areas, and that women founders often are kept out of the networking circle because a lot of it happens in an environment mostly reserved for men:

You rarely see investors who are men inviting a women founder to play golf, and it’s not as normal to go out with your investors and have a beer if you’re a woman as if you’re a man.

Torras disagrees:

I do all the same things as any other man would do, investor or entrepreneur.

Support each other

Tost doesn’t think there’s a clear path to making the startup ecosystem more diverse:

There’s no list of things we should get done to become a more diverse tech hub, it boils down to supporting each other as women in tech and working really hard for what you want to achieve.

Also Torras thinks supporting each other’s progress is more important than anything else:

I always believed in seeing opportunities, before challenges. I like to stay positive and focus on the positive things that are happening in the space of women in tech in Spain.

She continues:

If you are involved in the startup ecosystem, and you show ambition and the right vision, I think being a women is more and more becoming an advantage.

Torras explains that there’s big things going on, and that she can’t reveal exactly what yet, but that it will benefit women in tech in Barcelona and Spain is for sure.

To get the full discussion, take a look at the video in the top.