How to Build a Winning Culture for Your Tech Startup | The Pair Program Ep19

Join us as our hosts, Tim and Mike, talk to startup tech leaders Anusha Iyer and Ben Wilson. Anusha is the President, CTO and Co-Founder of Corsha. She is a technology leader with over 15 years of experience in security-minded software, analytics, and managed services. Ben is a passionate technologist and serial CTO who has been leading digital change across diverse industries for more than 20 years. Both Ben and Anusha are passionate about helping startup teams establish strong cultures that adapt through all stages of growth.

In this episode they discuss how technical leaders and teams can contribute to and establish their startup’s culture.

You’ll learn about:

• The difference between early-stage startup culture vs. the culture at a later stage company (And the challenges that come with building culture at these different stages).
• What traits to look for in technical team members who will grow with your company.
• How to build a team that is passionate about the company mission.
• How to adapt your tech strategy and processes as the startup scales.

And much more!

Interested in exploring a new startup career opportunity? Check out myhatchpad.com/jobs to browse startups by stage, tech stack, and salary.

Are you a startup founder or tech leader looking to grow your engineering or product teams? Check out hatchit.io/hire to learn more about how hatch I.T. can help your teams grow.

Start building for free at Interval.com today by going to interval.com/pairprogram! 

Welcome to the Pair program from hatchpad, the podcast that gives you a

front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world.

I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of Hatchpad,

and I'm your other host, Mike

Ruin.

Join us each episode as we bring together two guests to dissect topics

at the intersection of technology, startups, and career growth.

All right, what's up everyone?

We are back for another episode of the Pair Program.

I'm your host, Tim Winkler, accompanied by my co-host Mike Grow.

And Mike, um, you know, I like to start things with a little question for you.

In our, uh, team, uh, meetings every Wednesday we, we toss out like a hot take

and, uh, kinda like hot take Wednesday.

Um, so I need your thoughts on this one.

The one that came up this past week.

Carrot cake is disgusting.

Where do you stand?

Carrot cake is one of my favorite cakes.

So I am pro-care cake.

I'm, I'm in the same boat.

I mean, but folks like to argue like, oh, well, vegetables and

desserts don't belong together.

Those

strong and, and close.

. Tim: Yeah, I, I'm with you.

I have a strong opinion on carrot cake.

It

seems I asked the, the right person for this.

Uh, alright, cool.

Well, let's, let's give the listeners just a quick heads up on today's episode.

Uh, I am excited for this one.

We're calling it crafting culture, uh, and a particular, you know, culture in,

you know, startup environments, uh, or different environments, uh, as companies.

And in this discussion we're gonna be hearing from, you know, two great guests.

Uh, both have very diverse career paths and multiple environments

stemming from Fortune 500 to Fang and, uh, of course some early stage

and later stage startup experience.

So I am confident that they'll bring some very insightful

perspective to our discussion.

So Anusha and Ben, thank you both for spending time with us on the Para Program.

Thanks for having us.

Happy to be.

For sure.

All right.

Now before we dive in, we do like to kick things off with a

fun segment called Pair Me Up.

Um, here's where we're gonna go around the room and basically

shout out a complimentary pairing.

And Mike, as you always do, start us off.

What do you have for us?

Pair, pair me up.

That was late.

That was late.

So, uh, going back to food, uh, and weather.

I, uh, this time of year, uh, late.

Which it is while we're recording late summer and fresh

figs, uh, I have a fig tree.

Um, one of the benefits from working from home is now I occasionally work

from outside on my deck and it's kind of nice having a fig tree right there

that I can pick fresh figs from.

Um, and it is a very late, late August, early September fruit.

Um, so there, that's, and you can just pick 'em and eat 'em.

It's nice.

You throw those in, like, I don't know, salads or uh,

smoothies, anything like that?

Nope.

We just, uh, nah,

we haven't really it from, yeah, just straight from to my mouth.

Look for wasps cuz there's something known as a fig.

I know if you know anything, but basically you're eating fig and fig larva every

time, but I've gotten over

it.

Never heard of a f wasp.

Thank you for educat.

Um, alright.

My pairing is going to be octoberfest and hangovers and yeah, again, I know

this episode isn't gonna be airing for a month from now, but I, I do

like to bring my pairings into the current moment and currently I am

battling a very solid hangover from an octoberfest party last night.

And it was an awesome, you know, kind of celebration.

There was everything.

Like authentic German bands.

They have the classic foods like the sauerkraut, schnitzel,

uh, and of course beer.

Um, and I dunno, the Germans are very smart about how they get you drunk because

they give us these, I'll show it here, these beer steins that, um, you, you can't

really tell like how much you've drank.

Um, so the next thing you know, you've had a few.

Of these signs and everything starts getting a little bit fuzzier and,

and, uh, that's, that's my pairing.

It's gonna keep it, uh, real with Octoberfest and hangovers.

So

having been to Munich and, and Octoberfest, I'm sorry you really

haven't experienced Octoberfest?

I've been three or four times.

Not the same's.

I do, I do not think your pairing.

Is correct because you haven't had the proper experience , I feel

like the Kanye Taylor Swift, uh, on the

Oscar

on stage.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened, man.

Sorry.

No, you're right man.

I'm, I'm not gonna pretend like this was the authentic real deal we'll say.

It was a pretty advanced, it was at the German Air Force Command,

uh, here at Dulles Airport.

They, they basically vetted out their, their hang.

And, um, you know, brought in, you know, all the things, uh, from Germany, but

it's put nothing to compare to Munich.

And it is on the bucket list though.

I do want to

do wanna get It feels like you're a drinking Bud Light.

Sorry.

. . Tim: That's hard.

Again, man.

I can't wait to pass it over to bed for his pairing.

. Right.

Let's do it.

Let's, Ben, let's uh, get a quick intro from you and tell us,

uh, your parent.

Uh, so I'm Ben Wilson.

I'm CEO of, uh, OEA Edge Ed, uh, network.

My pairing this morning is, uh, the Disney Genie Plus and

Early Morning Disappointment.

Those are my two parents

expand on, on

a, what, why?

I just came back from Disney with my kids and they make you buy this

Disney Genie thing to get in line and like you have to log on at 7:00 AM.

And you get up early, you log out at 7:00 AM and then you try to get into

rise of the resistance and it's all taken up and you can't even get in

It's ridiculous.

I paid like 25 bucks per person for this.

And it's like I already bought the ticket to get into the park.

I spent another 25 bucks per person to sit in one line for a one

ride and I couldn't even do that.

It was like total disappointment.

Aww, bomb.

Disney.

Yeah, Disney needs to, uh, chop up, but the good, here's the good.

When I showed up to go and look at the ride when everyone was

gonna get on, it was closed.

So I find I was a little bit vindictive about it because I was like, I was

kinda happy that it was closed.

I didn't get on.

So I

feel

bad about that.

Share the misery.

I know.

Well, fre,

good stuff.

Um, alright, Anusha, how about yourself?

Quick, uh, intro and your.

Sure.

Hi.

Yeah, I'm Anus Scheyer.

I'm the president and CTO of a cybersecurity startup

in the DC area called Koha.

And, uh, my parenting's gonna be kind of a contradiction in terms, but it's

morning rungs and Dunking Donuts.

So I, uh, basically bribe my son to ride with me, to run with me in the mornings.

If we can pull off a stop at Duncan on the way back.

So, , we gotta the point where that's, I show up pretty dead and

they know exactly what our order is and we just keep running back.

. Outro: That's

genius.

I gotta run with you.

That is like, awesome.

I've never heard that.

I wanna run with you.

That's fantastic.

So

my mom, uh, went on a run, uh, you know, a while ago and, um, It

was like a sponsored thing and there was a Dunkin Donuts, like at the

corner or whatever that was handing out, like to all the runners, like

here's some donuts and whatever.

And then you turn this corner, and it was right before this huge hail.

And so there was just all of these donuts tossed, like, it was like people took

a bite, turned the corner like, nope.

And threw the donuts.

Just a smile of half eaten donuts at the bottom of a hill.

That's awesome.

I love it.

That's a great parenting, uh, negotiation hack right there.

Go for, we'll get you donut.

That's right.

And you know what?

17 years old, you can basically pull off anything.

So . That's

true.

That's awesome.

All right, well, I, uh, I, I do wanna make the most of our time on the, on

the topic today, so, we'll, we'll jump into the, the heart of the episode.

And like I mentioned, we're gonna be talking about, you know, crafting

culture in these different environments.

We did strategically choose our guests given their specific experience from,

you know, different startup stages.

Up to, you know, larger companies.

So I thought it would, uh, be a good starting point, maybe approaching

this from the really early kind of pree seed stages and work our way up

to, you know, bigger tech fan size.

Um, and so, Anusha, I'll start with you.

You know, you're the cto, co-founder of course.

You know, over the last few years you've, you've been

growing this from seed to series.

Um, can you just kinda walk us through what those cultures feel

like for folks who maybe have never experienced working for a startup,

uh, or company of that size?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, you, uh, we kind of have a, a joke right now.

We just moved into a new space and so we, we call it course five, right?

And it's been four years and that's kind of how it goes, is you start with working

out of a Starbucks canon, you know, the canonical story to outta someone.

Dining room table.

So a little bit bigger.

A little bit bigger, and, and it really is important to bring everyone on the

team along and excited for that growth and that that culture as you're growing.

Um, and it's a great opportunity to bring folks in at kind of a ground stage where

they get to wear a ton of different hats.

So you're looking for people early on that get energy out of that, right?

That want to do that.

They.

70%, 80% of their day be hands on keyboard, but then they get a little bit

of excitement from doing other things too.

Hmm.

So what's the size of, of Koha today?

From a headcount perspective?

I think we are including a couple of, um, contractors around 20.

Cool.

And so you, you kind of started, um, you know, cafe coffee shops.

Um, did you do any, uh, coworking spaces or anything like that prior

to moving into the, the office space?

We

didn't actually, we, um, were really fortunate to get some, some pretty

sweet office space that was actually more cost effective than co-working.

And we ended up hiring a core team of about six of us, include not

including myself and my co-founder.

Okay.

So it made more sense to just kind of get a small office space.

Got it.

Um, and we'll, we'll dissect this a little bit further.

Um, I wanna quickly pivot over to Ben.

Uh, and Ben, you know, you've, you've worked most of your

career in bigger companies.

Uh, most recently you were with Google for four plus years

prior to joining with, um, Olay.

Uh, and so, uh, I believe Olay series.

Stage, you know, maybe you can give us a little more context in terms of like

where you're at headcount wise as well.

But I, I'd love to hear, you know, that transition, uh, and, and some things that

really, you know, come to mind or what stood out for you making that transition.

Yeah, I mean, uh, so when I left, uh, Google, I ended up, uh, at EA and,

um, we were actually working out of, uh, a house slash garage and it was, Phenomenal.

The ceo, Dave Mackey, he phenomenal founder, phenomenal person.

And it was like grit.

And like when I joined, you know, I kind of knew the financials and

then, you know, you get into it a little bit more and all of a sudden

you're like, wow, this, this is tight.

This is like really like, In August, are we gonna make payroll?

I'm just, I'm just kinda curious cause I just gotta know.

Right?

And you go through these cycles and you work with the people and you try to

understand what's the psychology now.

We ended up getting funded by Insight Partners in September, so

it all, it, it was a great story.

But you go through these things that like is really hard to understand

unless you work for a very, very small company and there are only certain types

of personalities that can go do it.

I would say, you know, my, our founder Dave Mackey is one of these people.

He gritted it for like six and a half, seven years.

I like that was like that.

That's not me.

I couldn't do that.

Right?

But going from like, Hey, I've got product market fit to kind of the next

step, that's a space I can do well in.

And so being able to understand where the company's at and what

needs they have, help you understand whether you're gonna be able to fit.

Like, uh, I should like think like, I'm not sure I could do zero to 20.

Like that sounds really hard.

I've been in charge of.

20 to a hundred, we're at almost a hundred people now.

And it's like that's a different type of scale, a different kind of thought.

And that's something I can sink my teeth into.

And a lot of that has to do with my background on the, in the baker

companies where I was CTO and you know, working for the CTO of

Google and all that kind of stuff.

Those experiences kind of brought me to the place where I could go do it,

but I certainly couldn't do Zero to 20.

Zero to 20 is a whole different ball.

Let's break that down a little

bit.

Cause I think, um, I think that it's, it's one of my favorite, uh, sizes to

really kind of, uh, dissect and, and we work with, you know, startups that

are usually in that seed to a, um, you know, I, I started my business outta

my garage 10 years ago, and my first hires, now my business partner and coo

and that, that relationship in those very early stages, they, they oftentimes

equate it to like, you're a family.

Yeah.

And, and often the co-founder relationship is like a marriage.

And, um, you know, I'm, I'm interested Anusha on, you know, how did you, you

know, navigating those waters with getting those first folks on board, um, the

level of trust that needs to be there.

And then how do you kind of feel like they're that fit, that they're

gonna adapt into this environment because it's high risk, it's wearing

multiple hats like you mentioned.

Uh, you know, what are you doing, you know, as a leader to kind.

Figure out who's gonna, who's gonna work here, who's gonna thrive, and

then who this isn't really a great

fit for.

Yeah, it's, it's a great point.

It really is.

Um, you know, if not a family, definitely a really tight village, right?

Really tight community.

Um, especially if you have a co-founder, you end up hopefully

by a couple of years in finishing each other's sentences, right?

Mm-hmm.

, that's what you want, is you want.

Alignment.

Um, and, and for us, we ended up kind of starting with deep tech that we knew

a lot of folks wouldn't necessarily have the background in coming into it.

So there was also the, the technical aspect of it, of like coming up to speed

with the tech stack and the whole bit.

And so it's, you know, it's to, um, Mike's point, it is definitely grit.

You, you have to look for people that are willing to stick it in there,

regardless of what it's gonna take.

And there will be ebbs and flows, right?

But, You know, I could tell you right now, I remember one of our, our first,

um, POCs that we were doing, it was with a, a pretty large system integrator,

and we were working on it for months.

And then of course, the night before we're supposed to deliver right on schedule,

we run into a major issue, right.

Um, and that weekend, you know, we knew that, okay, it's all hands on deck and,

uh, middle of the summer in DC we don't.

AC in the building.

So we relocated everyone to a house, like to my house actually.

And it's one of those bonding experiences By the end of the weekend we got

there, but it was after a, a house full of beer bottles and pizzas and,

you know, the place basically looked like it had gone through a frat party,

but, you know, so that kind of thing.

And, and we got there.

But it's that bonding that really, those kind of experiences really bond a.

Right.

Um, and you have to have the mindset to be able to kind of survive

those ebbs and flows that a startup type environment just calls for.

Um, and I wouldn't even say, you know, it's a particular demographic.

It's not like it's a particular type of individual.

It really is just that, that grit and that belief that you're

building something bigger together.

I think it's also buying into the idea.

Those moments.

I've gone through plenty of those in my career as well.

Like being in a small company and doing, you know, those crazy, whatever.

It's those experiences that you then draw on in the future, even

though at the time it seemed like it was like terrible and whatever.

There were fires.

Yeah, and it was like chaotic the same time.

That's like when you're a larger company, a little bit down the road.

Being able to draw the energy from those times and, and sort of remember that

it's just this kind of weird thing.

And I think if you're not the type of person who can embrace that

type of environment, then right.

It's not gonna be a good fit.

Um, for sure.

Um,

yeah.

So that, that's an important part.

And, and it's great, but it's also just knowing that like there's some, there's

something more to it than just mm-hmm.

for persevering.

It's not just, I need to survive this, you know?

Yeah.

It's a little more.

It is, it's almost like, you know, at the stage of zero to 20, you almost

have to be somewhat uncompromising, right?

Mm-hmm.

. Cause you're building the foundation for a lot of what's gonna follow, both from

a, a product and technology perspective, but also a culture perspective.

And so you have to set what your baselines are really early in and, and

not compromise on those, even when.

You know, those crunch moments, and it's potentially easy to do, and those

are stories that I'm hearing from our team now is we're bringing in

a fresh wave of folks where they're saying, no, well, this is our baseline.

We don't, we don't do that.

Or we won't compromise on that regardless of what the situation calls for, because

we know we've survived, survived it

before.

Mm-hmm.

, it's a good segue into like a, so Ben, you said that you, you

all went from, was it 20 to 80?

About

30 to a.

30 to a hundred.

Um, and so, you know, how do you keep folks engaged?

I mean, that's, that's crazy.

That's, that's a lot of growth within what, what time span was it?

Uh, nine months.

Wow.

So how do you keep those folks kind of engaged?

Well, one, how do you even hire like that?

That's insane.

We'd love to hear, see your roadmap on, on, you know, what firms you use for that.

That is, uh, truly impressive.

I, I want to know, like, how do you keep folks engaged at that rapid.

Without feeling like, you know, they're just, I don't know, one

more number added to the bunch.

Uh, but like, almost, you know, each hire, you know, you're a special

addition here and, uh, what, what is it that you all do that's, that's special

that, that carves that out for folks?

You know, I mean, I think it's when you have to think about, right?

You gotta break it down into a team and you gotta tell the team it's special.

Every team is special.

It's like, you know, you think about it, like the engineers are

always like, well, if it wasn't for me, there wouldn't be any product.

Then there wouldn't be any, any need to do anything.

It's like, well, yeah, but like if there aren't any sales people, no one's buying

the product and we're all going home.

And so it's like this idea of like dividing the work and knowing each

piece of the work is so important and that mission is making our customer the

hero and being able to rally around a mission is what's so important in my.

When you're a, when you're a 20 person startup.

When I first started here, I mean, Dave was the integrator.

He like, okay, I don't know all the things, so let's go ask Dave.

And like he became the integrator and that was super important.

You get to 50 or 60 people, you can't do that anymore.

What you need to do is everyone needs the autonomy to be awesome.

They.

And that autonomy to be awesome comes with an accountability and responsibility.

You as a, as part of the leadership team, have to go in and enforce.

It's like, it's great you have autonomy, but did you go talk to this person?

Did you talk to this person?

Did you make sure this customer's gonna be happy?

All these different things.

And when you come into an organization and you're two months in and

there's someone who's been sitting there for five years, gritting it

out, it's like, did you talk to.

And these are things you have to teach within the organization.

When you grow at such a breakneck speed and there becomes these pillars, right?

These pillars of people who know exactly what's taken place in the past, who can

help you make the decisions in the future.

Now, sometimes the decisions of the past were like, okay, we were going north.

Like, oh wow, that was, we're going south now.

I mean, that was just, that was that.

Totally didn't.

And you have to be able to step back and recognize that.

And it is very, very difficult when you've been down on the ground in the

grid, in the grid, doing it for five, six years, and then being able to pull

yourself back out and say, yeah, we did that, but now that won't scale.

We can't do that for a hundred thousand.

For us, it's water meters.

We do things for a hundred thousand water.

We would do it for five.

Now we need to do it for a hundred thousand or 200,000.

It doesn't scale.

And this idea of scale is the most important part where I could go and be

a mad scientist in the back and make it work, but hey, that doesn't scale.

And these are the things you have to go do.

And part, part of what you have to do is you have to go and drive that

culture that says, Hey, it's inclusive.

Our customer is the hero of the story, not us.

That's kind of how I think about it.

I'm not sure there's a recipe, but uh, that's kind of what we went.

I think

the scaling thing is interesting because the, there's stuff that you

like, cuz I think the opposite is also true when you're going zero to 20

or, or whatever, where I think people start think trying to build overbuild

or try and think too much about, well this needs to be able to scale.

And it's like, well, That's all well and good, but if we don't actually get this

built, we're just gonna go outta business.

So there's that balance of,

that still happens when you're, when you're 30 to hundred, that still happens.

I mean,

let's, oh, I'm sure it does.

Right.

But I think that that whole notion, like, I think that that's, that's one

of those things that's really hard to navigate is how do you build the, the,

the right solution that's the right balance of scalability versus, yeah.

First, let, let me just dis.

The word right.

Really makes me feel uncomfortable cuz it is never Right.

Right.

There's right now what is, what is gonna work for right now and what

doesn't handcuff me down the road.

Right.

And what that is for me with a company that's grown to almost a

hundred people and what that is for Anusha in for a company of 20.

Are likely very, very different things.

Right.

I have customers on every coast in the United States.

Right.

That has a different feel for it.

Right.

And my customers actually have physical things that's different too.

So each startup is gonna be a little bit different.

Mm-hmm.

. Anusha: Yeah, a hundred percent.

And to your point of like having those pillars and, and almost those early, those

folks early in that have gone through the grit end up being the integrators, right?

But it's not just about scaling the product, it's about scaling the

mentality and scaling the institutional knowledge that they have, right?

So that they become focal points, perhaps of different teams.

But those teams have to continue on and expand.

Mm.

Yeah.

And, and that team, and when you think about that team concept, what you can't

have is people back there going, I'm trying to make sure that like no one

else knows what I know because mm-hmm.

then I'll always be needed.

These are the things you've gotta go figure out from a leadership perspective.

Cause there's just an innate human thing that we all do myself.

Everybody does.

And what you have to do is like reject that thought process and be able

to say, I'm putting in Confluence.

So if I'm not here because I went to Las Vegas for the.

Someone can find it.

Yeah.

That mentality becomes so important because everything changes over time.

When you go from, you know, 20 or 30 to a hundred people, so many things change.

You've got to write this stuff down, you've gotta have a structure.

You gotta have what, what, what I would call an enterprise operating system.

Some process to allow you to go, Hey, this isn't issue.

This isn't an issue.

These are the things that really bring teams.

A hundred percent.

We have a, a head of infrastructure that, uh, at least once a week I will

hear him say this, where he is like, my sole purpose is to automate myself

out of a job cuz I don't wanna be doing the same things in five years or

even next week that I'm doing today.

Cuz that means I'm not growing.

Right.

So, and that's kind of the way to, to.

Put a positive spin on that culture of don't hold on to information, because then

you'll be stuck doing what you're doing.

You wanna move, you wanna grow and move on to something else.

In fact, that's

advice that I give, like when that's how I've moved up in my career.

That's how like, whenever people who report to me ask me

questions like, what do you do?

It's like, right.

The, the idea is, If I can get out of the job I'm doing now to work

on other things, that's, that's what's enabled me to move up.

And so writing things down, training my replacement, you know what?

Automating my way out of it, whatever it is.

Those are all the ways to, to stop.

Like if the company can't see you, like can't see anyone else in the role that

you're currently in, that's a problem.

Like that's gonna stifle your own

ability to.

Yeah, it's a, I I love the automate piece.

So when I was at Google that if you're gonna do it a second time, write a

script so no one ever has to do it again.

And when you run at scale like Google does, it was like

everything was automated.

I mean, you, and that made everything kind of scary too.

Press the automate button, it goes across every data center in the world.

It's like planet scale.

Computes is, uh, is, is a bit scary.

So,

Yeah.

. Yeah.

We ran a whole episode on, on this called Empowering Teams, and I think it's a, you

know, there's a, there's an art to it.

Some folks have a tough time like passing off the reigns or, or letting

go of control, and it usually is a, at a C-suite or a founder, that when

you make that transition of that next layer, um, you know, having the,

the, the willingness to, to give a little bit up, you know, and, and, uh,

trust I think is a big piece of that.

Like, trust that it'll, it'll get carried out, you know, if you,

if you have the right folks in.

Hey, startup Techies

has this podcast inspired you to explore a new startup career

opportunity to make sure to check out my hatchpad.com/jobs to browse

startups by stage tech, tech and salary.

Um, but Ben, I, I, I kinda wanna talk on that piece too.

So you, you mentioned, um, uh, some, some of that stuff from Google.

Anusha, you worked with large companies, Intel in the past.

What are some of these things from like bigger environments

from a culture that you miss?

Um, now that you're in a smaller environment?

For me, I think some of it is when you think about culture,

the culture's already set so you don't have to think about it.

You're, you as an individual don't have to think about, you just

follow the culture and it's good.

When you're in a startup like this, which you have to recognize is sometimes

the culture's gonna have to change.

It changes from 20 people to a hundred.

It has to change because when you're, when you're 20 or 30

people, like we were right.

It was okay if we all kind of worked together and you didn't have a lot

of autonomy cuz you're so connected.

But once you get to a hundred people, you can't be so well coordinated.

And so being able to have autonomy to make decisions becomes really important.

The other thing is, is like you gotta bring data to a lot of these.

And what oftentimes happens, especially as we grew, sometimes

the title took precedence over data, and you can't let that happen.

What you've gotta do is you gotta bring data to the table and be

able to say, the options are this, here's what the data's telling us.

Sometimes data lies, and we all know that.

We all know that.

Sometimes data tells you one thing, it really means another.

And what we wanna do is be able to use it as a guidepost

to be able to make decisions.

Because we always say, you know, the world is full of risks.

We will be vi.

And you're vigilant by using that data.

And for me, when I think about that kind of growth spurt, that kind of what, what

is it that's different between a Google or a Siemens like I've worked for and

what's at, uh, Alea is really that you're constantly refining that, that culture a

little bit on how you think about things.

For us, our mission is to eliminate all water loss in a water utility.

That has not changed, that will not change, but how we go about it

lightly likely will be tweaked every year just because what we learn

through our process, what we learn through our customers will change.

Well, an

anusha about yourself.

Yeah.

I mean, I would say I completely agree with it.

I love the idea of.

Of data over title.

Um, I think that's actually one of the advantages of a smaller company

oftentimes is that you don't have, you don't have a, a huge hierarchy, right?

Um, it's, it's fairly flat and everyone's kind of, um, outcomes and data they

produce speak for themselves or hopefully speak for themselves in the right culture.

I'd say the thing I miss the most from a larger organization is some of the

structure and the processes being in.

, um, and also backups, right?

You know, a small company you normally do not have the luxury

of having anyone backing up, you know, functions completely.

And, and if someone's out or you know, someone is not well

or something, it's, it's tough.

So, you know, if I had.

It's probably one thing I would tweak and something that I'm

focusing on now is we're moving, going from like 20 to 50, right?

Is how do you double up on expertise and double up on roles and things like that.

Yeah.

You know, and what that sparks me to remember too is.

When you're in a large company, right?

Even when I was at Google, there would be people who had 10 years

at Google, but they did only two things in Google during that time.

And it's like, it's not that they're bad, it's like what they're trying to

do is do something at scale, planet scale, planet size, compute, right?

But like they don't have that broad experience that allows you to have

a little bit more perspective.

And that's what's incredible about startups, right, is you've

gotta think about everything.

Even if you're an engineer, you kind of think about, go to.

Even if, if you're in go to market, you think about, well

wait, this has to run fast.

Why would we write that in Python?

That should be in c plus plus.

It's like this type of thought process happens across the business because

everyone is trying to get focused on that customer, be able to say, the

customer needs this thing, and that cus that customer focus really makes a

difference across the entire organization.

I think that's a huge difference in between large companies.

So there's always that group of people in large companies.

I don't think about customers, I just try to keep the

internal engine running, right?

Mm-hmm.

. Right.

So one of the questions I following up on that for both of you.

We know that culture has to change the culture of a small

company to a large company.

What are some of the things that you look for, like to identify

when that change needs to happen?

Because I've been at plenty of places where the, the founders are so intent on

certain cultural things that we're, yeah, you're right, that's what got us here,

but it's not what's gonna get us there.

And so sort of identifying some of those things.

And how do you, how do you allow your culture to ev to, to sort of evolve.

Curious.

Yeah, it's a great question.

I mean, we are going through that process right now where we've come at

it from the angle of just, you know, kind of a traditional retrospective,

like what's working, what do we really wanna hold onto and make sure that we

scale that out in some way, shape, or form, and what's not working right.

Or what do we wanna continually improve or what do we have to change for scale?

So one of the really important elements for us from day one

has always been transparency.

We, we were, both my co-founder and I have been committed to making sure that.

Everyone in the company knows as much as they want to know about different fields.

Right?

And to, to Ben's point, whether that is the tech stack that's being used on the

business development side, or whether that is the, the prospects that we're going

after or the sectors we're going after, vice versa from the engineering team.

If you want information, it should be, for the most part available.

And accessible.

Um, so that's something that we are really looking at how to continue.

Now, the, the mechanisms by which we convey the transparency and convey the

information have to scale up, right?

Like we can't necessarily do a a the same elements of frequency of all hands, for

example, or something like that, right?

We're not all sitting at the same table all the time and like cranking out

code, like all of that's a little bit.

But that core value of transparency, we wanna continue.

Now, the things that we are trying to scale out or improve on are

things like being able to support multiple simultaneous customers

in different geographic regions.

And that just takes a different mindset.

Um, than if you are a team of four or five.

Right.

And it's just coffee.

Also the

workflows.

Just a

lot of coffee

a little bit.

Exactly.

A couple of these is what it

more than just in October.

. Yeah,

. Tim: That's right.

And I clearly heard Anusha say, Hey, there's a weekend where there's

a lot of beer bottles and pizza, so.

Yeah, I think for months after that my daughter was like, my mom threw us

really wild coding parties and I was like,

, Tim: you know, initially bringing

Uh, and I think it's not, it's, it's important to highlight too, because

I think it's something that was.

Also really, uh, exposed when everybody went remote.

And, and, and that's kind of like, how do people still have access to that

information on what's happening across other departments when they're not

physically coming together and that's just casually happening in the kitchen

or wherever it happens, you know?

We realize that it was like, you know, as the company was growing, uh, yeah,

folks wanted to know more about yeah, what is the, the sales strategy now?

And you know what, you know what's in the pipeline.

We're excited to hear what's.

Um, and it wasn't, we didn't have the time to keep doing these, these

all hands every single week, right?

So we do monthly all hands.

So in, in turn, we decided to do a weekly newsletter called the Yo,

which we send out every, uh, Thursday or whatever, and it goes out and it

shows you by department like, Hey, this is what's going on in marketing.

Oh, this is what's happening.

On the media team.

Um, and it gives everybody a little more exposure and a little bit more like

they feel like they're part of something larger than just what am I doing in

my, you know, my space, my department.

Um, so that was, you know, that was something that worked well for us.

But I, I like that point.

Cause I think access to information and make it accessible.

It's a really interesting point about, you know, as you get

bigger, something you're not always thinking of, but your team probably

is, and you never do it right either because no matter what you do, There's

always, once you get to a large enough size, it's, it doesn't fit to someone's

communication style or consumption style.

And so part of being a leader is just accepting that sometimes there are gonna

be some people who are just like, oh yeah, I don't read the yolk, because

it's just too much time to go look at it.

And every time I looked at it, it wasn't really valuable for me.

And it's like, and then it's like, okay, do I go address that

or do I continue to do this?

And those are oftentimes hard, hard things to go do.

Yeah.

A lot of it is, it's not personal, right?

Like mm-hmm.

, a lot of those things.

You, you just kind of, you have to commit to the core value in

doing your best and perhaps create different mechanisms for consumption.

Mm-hmm.

. Um, but yeah, I, I agree.

You can't, you can't, uh, appease everyone all the time.

Yeah.

My personal opinion is, I, I like the, uh, like at Google they did the T G I.

And kind of figure they're famous for it.

And it's, it was fantastic as a, as an individual who sat in the audience and

just watching it get consumed is awesome.

Cause Serge would do things like, Hey, you know, I tried to

download Wally for my daughter two nights ago and it didn't work.

So where's the play guy?

Come up here and explain to me why, why, what's going on with the downloads?

And like an SVP has to get out of his chair and trot up to the stage.

Well, gee, I don't know.

And this is like, I'll have someone go look at it and he is just like,

yeah, you should make sure this works.

I mean, how often is this happening to customers?

I'd really like to know.

And it it create, it's, you know, it's a little bit of playback and

forth, but it also shows like at the end of the day there are things that

are very important to customers.

For him that night, it was to be able to watch Wally with his daughter and

he couldn't do it cause he couldn't get to download the work for some reason.

And being able to make it personal like that, but also put a little

humor in it and put the people who are accountable on the.

Is helpful and that's why I like t gss.

But I, I find that kind of like newsletter thing hard to do personally

because it's just like everyone looks at every word and you know, you have

a hundred people are like, okay, they're gonna dissect that baby.

I'd much rather have that conversation personally.

That's my style though.

What, what is

t g?

Thank God.

Should I go?

Should I Google?

Thank you.

It was the week, it was a weekly time to ask, uh, Serge and,

and, uh, Larry, anything you wanted.

And you'd be surprised.

It was amazing what people would ask.

It was interesting.

So anybody can ask.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Like, they don't have my favorite candy bar anymore.

Why not?

And then the guy from the, the, uh, uh, real estate group would have trot up and

explain why there wasn't a candy bar.

I swear to that it happened.

, Anusha: I swear.

Which is kind of cool.

You know, we do the weekly all hands, but it's almost like we are just talking

at, as opposed to receiving in, you know?

Mm-hmm.

requests or information.

I really like that.

That's a good idea.

It's, it's fantastic.

There's also those, these little tools where they can

ask questions ahead of time.

They can all vote down, vote and, and do some of the questions,

and we do a little bit of that.

I like the interactiveness of it.

Some people don't like it because sometimes they talk over each other.

I'm like, well, yeah.

I don't know.

That's me.

I, I just, I again, you know, having spent four years at Google, I love

a lot of things that they tried.

There are other things that didn't work as well, but it's good.

Yeah.

One of the things that's, so my current

company does something similar on Mondays where there's a little bit of

push out and then there's a q and a ask the, the CEO and COO or ask anything.

It's just ask anyone anything.

Um mm-hmm.

, one of the things that I find interesting is there's so many people who are scared

to ask a question, and I think that.

It takes a little while to get people comfortable with that.

And again, it's a cultural thing, right?

You have to be unafraid to like, because nobody's gonna react badly.

Like there's no stupid questions, you know, that type of thing.

And being comfortable sort of sharing that.

Um, Yeah, but you gotta do the plants.

You gotta go and find one of your, uh, VPs or someone that, that love embarrassing

themselves is like, okay, it's your turn to ask an embarrassing question.

What are you gonna ask?

And they'll ask and they'll, they'll do it.

And it'll, it'll create a situation where, uh, it's not bad

to ask embarrassing questions.

Like, this kid who asked what's to do with the candy bars was unbelievable.

They took it seriously and that that actually set a tone.

It set a tone for me and when, that was a moment in time for me that I

was like, man, this is really good

Yeah, that's

great.

Which is also right, like it's also really good to model the

behavior that you're looking for.

So oftentimes, I'll be the one in the group that asks this silly

question of like, Hey, what?

What's wrong with the plant?

Right?

Like ? Mm-hmm.

Something like that.

Just to make it comfortable in that environment and then Right, you pull down

the app and we figure out it needs more water or whatever, but like it's, yeah.

but that idea of modeling the behavior so it becomes comfortable for folks is

such an important part of the culture is just you can't ask people to do

what you're not willing to do yourself.

Yeah.

We've seen like a level of, you know, just being vulnerable as a, as a leader, you

know, gives folks a little bit of comfort to put their guard down and, and not

feel intimidated, um, for the most part.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ask me, ask what kind of candy bars we have here.

Right.

I'll tell and oftentimes like I Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, and it oftentimes, you know, I will literally be very, um, Transparent

or not, not transparent, but I guess the word is like very obvious about

saying when I don't know something.

I think that's also an element of the vulnerability that's been really

important to our culture to just be like, I don't know, but I can go find out.

Right, right.

I feel like so much trust is born out of that.

Like there's a kind of courage that has to come from saying, I don't.

Yeah, I mean, it's like me, I don't, I'm an engineer.

I don't know anything about sales, and we're talking about like these cold sales

calls that some of 'em have to go do.

I'm like, wow, that's brave.

And like one of the, for one of the guys who's like, oh, I'd love do it.

They'll never remember me.

And they'll like, they'll just call and like, I'm afraid

they're gonna remember me.

And it's like, it's this kind of like, I, I didn't, I'm like, I

embarrassed myself in front of the whole sales team because I just.

I don't think I could have done it.

Right.

It's just one of these things that I think being able to put yourself

in their shoes and be able to admire what they can do that you can't is

such an important piece about being able to like bring together a team.

Cause there's, I mean, to run any type of business, there's no way

any one person knows everything.

There's just impossible.

Yeah.

Good stuff.

Well, I think we, um, are going to wrap this segment up and transition into

our, our final segment here where we'll spin the, the community wheel behind me.

It's called Round Out My Career.

And, um, these are topics and questions that we have crowdsourced

from the Hatchpad community.

And, um, yeah, we'll kind of riff on, I'll give it a spin.

Let's round

it out.

I'm not sure I trust the, It's rigged.

Yeah.

In fact, it's all a facade.

Okay.

Yeah, it's goals we're, um,

I can't even read it.

It's in red.

You must have written in red.

I don't believe it says goals.

We put it on a

green screen and then we fill in what we want it to say

So what we,

what we actually wanna ask, um, Is, uh, is not about goals at all.

Um, I actually, we, we, yeah, we picked a question, uh, that we thought would

be a little bit more pertinent to this conversation, and it's about interviewing.

Um, and it's not so much from, you know, the hiring manager's

perspective, but as, as a candidate interviewing with a company.

So, uh, somebody approaches, you know, Aleah or k uh, and is trying

to navigate what the culture is.

What kind of questions do you think, you know, candidates can come to

those interviews with, to, to get a better perspective on what the

company culture's actually like?

Cause sometimes you're fed something that maybe isn't accurate when you

get in the door and you realize it.

What, what would you say are good questions to really try to get a

good view of what that culture's like before stepping foot in the.

Yeah, we'll start with you.

I was like, I would say, do you have a written bullet point

list of your company culture?

Almost everyone does say, well, let's go through it, show it to me, and then

you ask which one really isn't true.

Cause there's always one.

And if you can ask that question, they can be honest.

And they go, well, you know, we struggle with this one, or

We struggle with these two.

That helps you understand where they're at, because then they're saying the other

ones are, These are ones we're, we're striving to get to helps you kind of

like focus in on like, where are they at?

And then you can say, okay, this either fits to what I want

to go do or not want to go do.

And allows you to kind of have a little bit of a compass of,

of how to ask the next question.

Cause for me, if they don't have any, if they say, I don't have

anything written down, it's like, oh, well then you don't have one.

Cause literally, if you haven't written it down, it's just, to me it's baloney.

Interesting.

Kinda like that tactic of, uh, you know, tell me which one, you know, isn't,

isn't your your greatest strength, uh, uh, from a culture that's, that's good.

Uh, Anusha about yourself.

Yeah.

I'd say a good question for, for us would be what does you, how has retention been?

What is your retention policy look like?

Right.

So it oftentimes it's very telling how long.

Folks stay around, um, as to whether they are in a positive culture, positive

working environment, collaborative team, and that can tell a lot.

I think that's an

interesting one because, um, An unwillingness to share that is

certainly going to be a tell, right?

If they talk about how, oh, we've had this retention and we've kept this, you

know, if it, then it's kind of clear that it's, it's gonna be positive.

But if they're in any way cagey or hesitant, then even if you don't get

the direct answer to the question, you basically got the answer to the question.

Right.

That's a

good one.

That's really, yeah.

Really, really good one.

Um, and I think that's, yeah, we, you.

You can see, you know, the right on the wall if they've got a high attrition.

It's like some something's, something's not quite right here.

Um, Mike, what about you?

Anything that, uh, that you've kind of

experienced?

Yeah, I mean in my experience it's the asking what the culture is goes only

so far because I think a lot of that, especially if you're interviewing with

some of the founders or some of the people that have been there for a while, what

they think the culture is and what the culture actually is are not always the.

um, because you know, once it's, once the company's moved on a little bit

like what the day to day looks like.

So I try to ask more questions about like

certain situations, like what went well, what went poorly, like how can

you guys tell me about like, the same types of questions that they ask me?

Like, can you tell me about a time that something didn't go the

way you thought it was gonna go?

Those types of questions, um, to try and find out, like, can you,

like what was something that you.

Did recently, that didn't go particularly well and what was the reaction and

so and so forth and, and to me, like is it a collaborative environment

is way more important to people?

Like was it a supportive and collaborative thing?

So I'm looking for

certain things and asking that question.

I think

probably my advice to someone would be think about the things from a cultural

perspective that are important to you from if you've worked at places before,

things that you've liked and try and come up with questions that might help you

understand whether or not that company.

Exist, those qualities.

Um, that's the other thing, like just because this company says their culture

is X, Y, and Z, some of those might not really be all that like, impactful

for you as a, as an individual.

So it's also important to go in knowing, like having an idea of

like, what is important to me?

What am I looking for?

And, and I think the other thing to that is there's a big difference between a

virtual culture and an in-person culture.

Yes, yes.

Everyone wants to tell you that that's not true.

It is 100%.

And a lot of it has to do with, how does interaction happen?

Oh, most interactions happen via Slack.

Wow.

That's, that's really hard.

Like how do I get the emotion, how do I get the body language outta that?

And it's super hard, but when you're in the room and you

see the person and you can go.

I need to ask another question after that, an after they gave me that

answer, because clearly I didn't get the full answer out of it.

Mm-hmm.

those are really telltale and that, that's one of the things that I've

talked to a lot of my staff about is there is a certain portion of of us

that can absolutely do virtual and it will work, and there are other ones.

It's like.

Gosh, I need you in the office at least, you know, twice a week.

So we can sit down and talk.

And we have people who, who work from all over the United States, in which

case I ask 'em, Hey, let's, why don't you come in at least every other

month so we can sit down and talk and understand each other a little bit better?

It, it is a huge cultural divide and I think oftentimes people are like,

well, why would it be different?

Mm-hmm.

, it really.

It's a really topic right now.

Yeah.

Uh, especially in, in from the world of, of recruiting and hiring anyways

is, you know, a lot of these companies are now, you know, right around this

time of year, uh, or just this time, uh, folks are trying to bring folks back in.

And the question is, you know, well, tell me why.

And you need to kind of have, yeah, you need to be prepared to, to.

, why now I do have to come back and, and face the commute and deal with

those things with, when we've been doing it for two, two plus years now.

Um, it's, you're getting a lot of kickback with a lot of kickback from

candidates anyways, saying, you know, I need more, you need to tell me more why.

Um, and I, I completely agree.

I think it's, it's, uh, it's really challenging to, to, to manage a remote,

fully remote culture and have people feel like they're a part of something beyond

just, I'm coming to, to my keyboard to.

Um, and so one of the things that we did at, at Hatch was, uh, a company

retreat, and it was all, all company wide.

It was, um, you know, cha challenging for folks to kind of get there and,

uh, but once you were there, you know, that's, that was where, you know, kinda

the magic happened, uh, was, you know, three days of, of being able to, to

really engage with your team that you, you never get a chance to do fully.

So I, I agree with you, Ben.

It is a really, it is, um, aea, uh, what is the, the remote, uh, work.

You

can, you can be fully remote if you want.

I'll, I'll give you an example, right?

It's like who's ever done really, really good ux, fully remote?

There's probably a small, small number.

Yeah.

I tell you, UX is one of these things is just so hard to get right and it's like

you gotta really talk and see people.

I think it's hard for me, what I look for in people is like the

willingness to come in so we can have some of these conversations.

Mm-hmm.

, but like, you know, we're, we're in a build session right now, right.

It's like if they come in, it's headphones on, keyboard up, like they're going

at it and you look at it, it's like there's no reason for them to be here.

But then there are those moments where you see them gathering around talking.

It's just like they got some sort of problem, but you know, That's good.

They're there in person.

And it's this thing where you have to train the people to know

when, like, listen, we ought to just go into the office for this

for tomorrow and work this out.

And that is the culture.

You've gotta go figure out how to go drive.

And it's, it's not a straight line at all.

It's constantly changing.

I use UX as the perfect example cause it's like, That's hard.

That's hard.

Yeah.

We've heard a lot of, like product teams, they, they need that in person

collaboration as well because they, they work with so many different cross

departments, they really need to have that in person presence, whereas engineering

maybe sometimes isn't as necessary.

Uh, as folks on like that product and the product marketing teams, I.

Yeah.

No, go ahead.

Go ahead Ben.

I was gonna say, tell the engineering team, draw me an architectural diagram

remotely.

I was just gonna say that.

Yeah,

I'm sorry.

Ok.

I was just gonna say that No, you're absolutely right.

Like we've measured the time it takes to get to a point.

We're happy with a new architectural flow, virtually versus in person.

And there's a huge difference.

And, and you, you get, you kind of find alignment so much faster when

you're in the same room with someone because of all of the additional

body cues and things and just the interactions that you can key off of.

Right.

Um, or even just like, you know, virtual whiteboarding apps

only take you so far, right?

Sure.

There's, there's no replacement for standing around and

sketching something out.

Um, it'll be interesting to.

We have the same approach now where it is you can be fully remote.

We've tried to, with this new space, say if you come in at least three days a week,

then you get a dedicated office, right?

Otherwise, it's kind of an open space and, and I feel like there's just an

energy to the in-person collaboration when possible that you cannot replace.

That's the.

Yeah,

That's what this culture, that's what we'll put a bow on it.

This culture conversation's gonna come down to alcohol

and candy bars really lives.

Yeah, it's like carrot cake.

There's some very strong opinions on both sides, right?

That's right.

That's right.

Well, I think we'll wrap on that note.

Um, you, you guys have been fantastic.

Thank you so much for spending time with us and, and contributing

and, um, yeah, we, we appreciate you having on the pair program.

It's been a real

pleasure having you guys.

Thanks.

Thanks.

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