In this episode of the Dirt, Jenny von Podewils, co-founder of Leapsome, shares the origin and mission of their people enablement platform, designed to help companies retain, develop, align, and engage their workforce. 

Starting from a personal realization of the gaps in organizational health and culture, Jenny and her co-founder embarked on a journey to create a solution that addresses these challenges. With a background in politics and economics, Jenny's pivot to entrepreneurship led to the development of Leapsome, which has seen remarkable growth and success, including a significant Series A funding. 

Through a focus on customer feedback, continuous learning, and challenging the status quo, Leapsome has become a crucial tool for companies worldwide, including industry giants like Spotify and Unity.

Join Jim and Jenny as they unpack strategies on how to maximize employee engagement for a better culture…

3 Key Takeaways

• Invest in People Enablement: Investing in people enablement not only fosters a positive work environment but also directly contributes to the overall productivity and profitability of the company.  Focus on retaining, developing and engaging employees as a core strategy for business success.

• Embrace Feedback & Adaptability: Companies that actively seek and incorporate feedback are better positioned to evolve and meet the demands of the market.  Regularly solicit and act on feedback to improve and meet emerging challenges, as well as maintain a competitive edge.

• Prioritize Alignment and Clarity: Prioritizing alignment and clarity within an organization is crucial for maximizing efficiency and achieving strategic objectives.  Ensure that your team understands their roles, expectations, and how they contribute to the company’s goals.

Resources

https://www.leapsome.com/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/leapsome/

About Our Guest 

Jenny von Podewils is the co-founder and co-CEO of Leapsome, a people enablement platform backed by Insight Partners, Creandum, and Visionaries Club. Leapsome helps more than 1500 companies (including Spotify, Unity, and monday.com) build high-performing teams by driving employee development, productivity, and engagement.

Jenny is an alumna of the Universities of St. Gallen and Oxford. Prior to Leapsome, Jenny led teams in business development, corporate development, and digital transformation roles in media and tech companies. In recognition of her work, Jenny was awarded Female Founder of the Year 2023 in the prestigious German Startup Awards and has been listed as one of the top 50 female entrepreneurs in Germany by Handelsblatt. Jenny lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

About The Dirt Podcast 

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About Our Company

Orchid Black is a new kind of growth services firm. We partner with tech-forward companies to build smarter, better, game-changing businesses. 

Website: https://www.orchid.black 

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Okay, Jenny, welcome to the dirt.

Awesome, very great to be here with you Jim today.

Yeah, great to have you here. So tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and why we should all lean in.

Awesome. So I'm Jenny Poulowitz, one of the two founders of Liebsam. And Liebsam is a people enablement platform. So we help companies retain, develop, align and engage their workforce. And ultimately, as founders, as business owners, we all know, it's the people that ultimately are at the core of our success. So that's what we spend our time with, making sure you ultimately...

make your business successful by making your people successful. That's what we do on a daily basis, working with the likes of like a Spotify, Unity, also smaller companies. And yeah, I'd love to discuss a bit more about that with you today.

Yeah, so a lot of questions. What led you to start Leapsum and give us a couple highlights since day one?

Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to even like start with a bit of the founding story behind the company. So I pretty much started my career wanting to work on challenges that I found impactful. So it's very clear that I want to want to work on big challenges. I initially actually studied politics and economics and wanted to become a diplomat.

Yeah, please.

And then I realized that the way to have impact for me, being a very impatient person, is actually rather the business entrepreneurial route. And I started my first job in tech with the Kleentech company at the time. We're doing automation software controls for large scale battery storage. So very impactful technology. And the company grew really rapidly. And during this time, at rapid growth three core friction started to emerge. The first one was the alignment started to fall apart as the company scaled.

The second one was the organization health and culture deteriorated, so the environment in which people can succeed. And the third one, we didn't really have good structures, processes, or toolkits in place to help enable people and in particular managers, which are very important to scale a company. And this got me really, really passionate about the whole question of what ultimately makes people successful in organizations. And my co-founder, Kaiatan, she has very similar experiences and passions.

worked also for other companies, so seeing very, very similar challenges ever since. And we pretty much started to build the tool we wish we would have had in these companies and started LeapSum seven years ago. We actually ended up bootstrapping the company for roughly five years. We didn't intentionally bootstrap, we were dogmatically bootstrap, but we basically grew really, really rapidly just on the cash flow we got from selling our software.

So, bootstrapped and then VC backed, big ground. Like, talk to me a little bit about the evolution there, right, from a bootstrapped startup to now a well-funded venture backed business.

Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, as mentioned, we started off by feeling a pain that we felt in the previous organizations we worked for. Neither of us had ever worked in HR in the people space. Like both of us had felt this pain being employees, being managers. So we started to actually solve a problem we very much saw in the businesses we'd been working in and started to basically build out a tool. We always had this vision of building a platform.

that's very friendly, that connects all the pieces that ultimately drive people and manager effectiveness. So more modern performance management, clear goal setting, good one-on-one meetings, like surveys that service data that's actually actionable, but also connecting all of the dots between these pieces, like bringing that all the way to learning, to onboarding, and started like building that platform, starting off with instant feedback.

then the performance management piece, the goals piece, the surveys piece. And we always worked really, really closely with our customers, starting off by having the paint ourselves, being able to use our product, but also working very, very closely with our early customers. But we keep doing that. We listen very actively to our customers today. And so we always learned about what are their pains, what are the emerging pains, what's being underserved. And...

That's really been the basis of our success, that really, really strong listening to the customer while obviously being also clear of what our product vision is to make sure we're not being pulled into like too many different directions and yeah, also learning fast, iterating fast, we love feedback. And that's ultimately the basis of fast iteration and fast learning. And that's been pretty much at the core of our success.

And I would say that actually continues to be part of our success. And one of our core values is actually challenge the status quo. And again, I mean, that's what we keep doing, like asking ourselves, like what works, what doesn't work, where do we maybe need to slightly pivot, what's our go-to market that works in a slightly sort of like different market nowadays. So constant learning, constant iteration, and very, very close, staying very close to the customer.

So the decision to raise capital at that point, right? Very recent, obviously, versus continuing to bootstrap. What were the inputs to that decision-making process?

Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, we always ask ourselves in like monthly founders strategy workshops, what are our core priorities for the next quarter for the next year. And ultimately, up till early 2022, getting external or additional cash was just never a top priority. We were had top priorities around building product around

but we wanted to double down on that mid-market strategy and actually have pretty much to some extent split the go-to-market operation in the sense that we have a dedicated mid-market sales team, a dedicated mid-market CS team, which we had a lot more pragmatically up until then. And in order to be able to really double down on some of these expansion strategies, further internationalization, Nasdaq Global Hub, additional...

go-to-market motion, we decided like now is actually the time when getting additional cash in does make sense and becomes a top priority. And that's when we decided, okay, let's do it. We ran a really lean funding round. We've always tried to like optimize things in a way that we can do them very fast. We decided to take the decision to fundraise, I think, in.

mid-January and we ultimately closed the round by end of March. So it was a very, very fast, lean process, especially given that we hadn't interacted that much with the VC community because we were always laser focused on our execution in that bootstrapping mode. We intentionally said we're not going to react to all these inbound requests we're getting. And yeah, so that was again, like taking a really clear decision, but then also like executing it quite fast.

So how have you maintained efficiency with this added buffer of $60 million in the bank?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I think the truth is we aren't as efficient as we were in the bootstrapping days, because we started to invest, intentionally invest into additional growth dimensions and to some extent intentionally invested a bit more upfront to then see the return on these investments. And I mean, what's our way?

How do we operate? And I think that's ultimately with the out or the objective to stay efficient while growing fast. And for us, it's like being really, really clear in terms of where do we want to go. So like what's our ambition? Like what are the next steps in order to get there? And making sure that we really maintain this alignment from the strategy then to what are we tackling in the next quarter? Breaking that down into like team OKR, sub team OKRs.

like what are the initiatives that ultimately move the needle to move forward on these specific objectives. And then making sure that we break this alignment down all the way into the daily doing. So at Leapsim, we use Leapsim of course, and pretty much every meeting that runs at Leapsim has a clear agenda, like it's well prepared, and we make sure that we collect the outcomes. And that's a way again, also in daily doing, to stay really closely aligned to

How does what we do this week feed into OKRs, into our annual strategy, into our long-term ambition? Just making sure that we execute really, really well on that alignment piece. And while we do that, to also make sure that we hire the best people, make sure we onboard them really well, make sure we provide an environment in which these people can succeed. How we do that, like running using our own product again, running.

really, really good onboarding processes, like consistent feedback we get. We do like onboarding sessions as founders with all new employees. And we always ask people what surprised you. And one of the consistent answers is actually how well documented things are, how good the onboarding is. And that's the basis for ensuring people are set up for success and are able to execute in their role as quickly as possible, which helps us to maintain that speed again, right? And making sure the environment...

And because we collect the surveys, we collect data, we have a very open feedback culture, again, is also optimized for people to succeed. And we also experience growth pains, like every company, right? Maybe there's certain times when we realize, like our decision-making framework, our ownership framework doesn't really make sense anymore. There's too many cooks working on a project. Like, how do we clarify who does what? Like, do we need actually less people involved in certain projects? I mean, interesting frictions that do come up in every growth journey. And I think the way

we tackle them as we have this really open and honest conversate or like feedback and learning culture. So we have the ability based on that to challenge what works but doesn't work, to tweak it, to iterate on that and to work on getting it right. So I think that's an important part. And I think the third one next to the alignment and having the environment where people can succeed is also being really clear on what our expectations and then also having.

regular feedback, what do you do well, like strengths to build upon, like if we have a team of superstars all leveraging their best strengths, I mean that's going to get us very far, but also having the honest conversation when people aren't meeting the expectations towards their role and delivering what they're accountable for, so having effective, modern and also performance processes in place.

Well, I love hearing that you guys are using Leapsome. You're using your own tool to drive a lot of this behavior. Prior to starting Leapsome, were you already an expert in kind of OKRs through performance management, or was there anything that was new within new knowledge you had to learn along the way?

Yeah, I mean, like links to what I mentioned in the beginning, right? So we started the company because we were super passionate about the space and had seen how it wasn't executed well in previous or what opportunities were to execute it better than in previous companies. So we were really diving into like, OK, ours and how does modern performance management look like? What's the opportunity to move more into like an instant feedback culture?

people analytics, how to use data and people processes. A lot of these conversations were also maybe evolving and emerging at the time when we started the company. But then obviously, like, because we're living in a time, like in a world where things change constantly, and especially through COVID and the move to, the accelerated move to remote and hybrid work, I think that started a lot of new conversations.

that we then also had to learn. We learned a lot through, again, what I mentioned earlier, being really, really close to our customers, listening to them, what are new evolving challenges, what are new pains, what is being underserved? Like, what do you need today with some of the changing drivers in the environment, in the organization, the market around you? So I think COVID has been a big one. Also a lot more conversation and focus around mental health, maybe also triggered by all of these sort of uncertainty.

people were home, as we all know, through the COVID time, or forced to be home, which was maybe relief for parents at times, or maybe also like stressful for parents at times, or for singles being stuck in their own apartment without much ability for social contact. So all of these.

maybe to some extent also lingering challenges around mental health, maybe broke more to the surface. So that's been a little bit more of a focus. There's a lot of conversation about upskilling, re-skilling a certain organization. So I think, yes, I mean, we're working with, ultimately working with people. And so I think the nuanced challenges, how they change also like basically.

forces us and I think that's part of the fun to constantly rethink and learn and stay on top of how we best support companies through that.

And, and you're a, you're a CEO and a mother of two young ones. Um, I just had my first child. Uh, you know, what, what advice do you, would you give, let's just say to me at this point, um, on, uh, on dealing with the mix.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, it's...

Yeah, actually, I think there's one important piece of information that it's actually we're co-CEOs, which is actually, I think, part of the solution. And I think the beauty, maybe just to quickly speak about that, and then I'll come to the parenthood question, is I think what I often tell people that ask me, like, how is it like to be co-CEOs? And I think the best part about it is...

Okay.

First of all, we can take twice as many decisions in the time where the average CEO can only take half the decisions we take. So we can move at really, really strong speeds. It can also be, to some extent, lonely at the top. And we always have like a sparrings partner on eye level. And we really do challenge ourselves and our thinking hard. We often take like a devil's advocate standpoint, just to ultimately get to the best decision for the company.

But at the same time, we also very much divide and conquer. And both of us have our respective parts of ownership where we take the decisions and only like big decisions we take together or whenever somebody wants to spare something with the other person, like we go into like cool brainstorming sparrings mode and it works really, really well for us. And I think the beauty is being a mother of two little kids, like one is one and one is three, which is hectic at times.

But it's also like you've got somebody else who has your back and it gives a certain level of flexibility around like a burst, for example, to actually step out of the business. Because you have someone where you trust fully and you really know that person can actually take all of the ownership that you cannot give to your team, which I think the majority actually can be handled by the team.

And that's also something that I think is huge enabler for parenthood in a C-level role. And I mean, what are my personal learnings? I mean, I think it's for me, the way we go about it as a family is to have really, really clear family time. Like we always have like a family breakfast in the morning and we generally have like a family dinner in the evening.

So to have these routines and these habits of what time is truly reserved for the family in order to not feel like one or the other is getting sort of like not the priority the intention should have. And I think the other one is to have a really good support system. So to some extent to maybe even overbuild your support system.

because there's always unexpected things that happens with kids, right? Somebody gets sick and my husband and I both work and have challenging jobs. We, to some extent, also need a system that can cater to unexpected situations. So I think this has been the most valuable advice I also got from other female CEOs. It's like, don't build your setup, your support setup for the average week, but build it for the worst case scenario and it's more expensive.

but it ultimately is kind of the lever to make sure everyone's mental health and sustainability really is being catered for. And I think it's part of what makes it then work for everyone. So quality time, but also good support.

Yeah, that's good. Back to the company for a moment. The focus that you guys have is pretty pivotal towards the way that you've been able to grow with money and without and bootstrapped, right? And I think in the last 12 months, you grew from maybe 80 or so to 200 employees, is that correct?

I think 180 roughly is where we are right now.

Oh, so just, just probably 200 tomorrow, right? So, uh, how have you been able to, uh, to, to manage that level of growth in, in the same context that you mentioned earlier around talent management and, and people management and development.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's really very much what I mentioned is kind of like our success principles, our leaps and DNA. It's like being really, really diligent of who we bring onto the team. So we make sure we actually hire for three things. We hire for purpose fit. So we are purpose oriented company, like we care about making work fulfilling for people and we want to bring folks onto the team.

that really truly also care about this shared purpose journey we're on. That's the first one. And I think it unleashes a certain kind of energy that you really need to live up to that sort of ambition level. The second element is we hire obviously for functional fits or functional potential. The third one is we also hire for culture ads. So we want to make sure that it's always, or we have a process that always ensures people are a good fit in all three dimensions. We don't just.

higher for functional fit. And thereby, I think, already are very diligent on who we bring onto the team. I think then in the second step is the onboarding process, making sure we really get people to be onboarded to their role as quickly and effectively as possible. And then building the alignment, the clarity of where we're going, what is everyone's, every department's, every team's.

levers to ultimately drive us forward in a given quarter, but ultimately what that also breaks down to like for your top goals for the week or how do we stay aligned on the daily doing. And that's really how we operate and how managers and teams work with one another. And I think in addition, the line-up piece is so important as the company grows so quickly. So we all to some extent march to the same tune.

And I think it's, I mean, as mentioned before, I think there's also, again, like points where it breaks, where we need to make sure like without going to system maybe faster than we when we fixed it, where we need to make sure that we maintain the speed and fixing it. So I think the way for us to do that is just having this really, really strong culture of challenging things, listening to one another and having that feedback and learning culture so that we.

notice when things aren't moving in the right direction, when things are starting to break, clarifying who basically owns, fixing it if it isn't clear, and just setting up, I mean just being very fast to iterate and learn and improve these things sort of like in real time. And I mean I think that's always the challenge of any startup or scale-up that you're kind of like you're building the ship while you're sailing it and maybe really strong winds and

just making sure where we should put our attention and priorities at any given time to ultimately fix your build or invest into what ultimately moves the lever. Yeah, so I think that's part of our focus right now. And also while we do that, to also figure out like...

Where do we need to course correct? We are in the tech world, obviously, in a different environment and market than we were maybe two years ago. So like, what does it mean for us? How do we tweak our messaging, our positioning? How do we maybe even reprioritize elements of the product world, because other things are more important nowadays than we maybe anticipated at the beginning of the year. Just being very agile and just, again,

trying to understand and read all the different signals in the market from customers, from within the organization in the best possible way. And I mean, it's a complex system, right? So we don't always get it right, but trying to do that and course correct as quickly if there's new information.

So how does this challenge change when you are growing and bootstrapping in Germany to then being venture backed in the US? Because we talked a little bit about the venture versus bootstrap, but not much about the regional piece of it. What are some unique challenges there?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I mean, I think first of all, what's important is we've always built Leapsum for global markets. So we've always been optimized to build a tool that works for global customers. We've always been an English first company and we've always hired a quite a diverse team back in our.

We founded the company in Berlin, which is a very international city. I think it has a really strong talent appeal. So we had the opportunity to do that. So I think that's a really, really important foundation for ultimately becoming a global company. I think we're also very fortunate in the sense that OKR's performance management, employee surveys, onboarding, to some extent work very similar in San Francisco, New York City, London, Berlin.

but also like Singapore and Bangalore. And that ability to actually sell this product into or to global customers has basically enabled us and at the same time forced us to think sort of like the global customer base early on. And we sold the product also when we still had the operation just in Berlin already to...

customers all across Europe and North America, also like in Asia Pacific. And I think the complexity then obviously, and there's maybe some nuanced differences on integrations, languages, but we basically tackled them from product perspective relatively early on. And then I think the complexity though comes not on the product, then obviously more on the go-to-market side. Like there's nuanced differences and how

companies buy in the US versus in maybe different European companies. Like a German company will test a lot before they ever buy something, whereas maybe buying process in the US is actually much faster, but maybe you're at risk of sort of like there's more risk of churn, like because companies buy and then kick it out faster. So there's like these differences maybe in buyer behavior and also go to market, like which partnerships work, which channels work. So I think this is something where we then edit that layer of becoming

more nuanced in the different go-to-market approaches for different regions. And there are main focuses on certain European countries and North America. So we've added that layer of additional optimization already before opening the office in the US. Actually had a

North America oriented sales team operating out of Berlin during the COVID years, because we just couldn't hire or like set up that team properly, probably in the US, which actually worked really well for us, because we then hit the ground running once we opened the operation in New York City. And then obviously next layer of complexity is actually running to global hubs. And I think this is interesting also in the sense of like, how do we maintain?

culture in a certain way or have a certain cultural core in a global operation. And basically the way we went about that is actually by sending a launch team of seven members from the European team to North America to help set up the U.S. operation. And also like very much intentionally with the objective to also seed culture. And we know that the culture is going to be nuanced, different, but we want to have just certain, certain

giant beliefs, giant objectives, giant values. And I think we're in that process, I think so far so good. But obviously it's much more complex to have these two hubs and make sure everybody feels equally important and heard. And having one of our CEOs here versus one in Berlin, I think it's also very much part of giving both hubs the weight they deserve.

So what are some things in Europe that US based companies and business owners and CEOs wouldn't think about if they've never hired or managed a team over there? Mm-hmm.

In Europe, it's so much more complex in terms of a lot of the labor law. It's much slower to hire just because, at least in Germany, people have a much longer termination period. So I think I always envy you or envy U.S. companies for the speed at which you can hire here, which I think is great. I think generally

At least if you compare Europe to, and obviously it's like there's differences within Europe, but to like the tech hubs here, maybe San Francisco, Austin, New York City, it's much cheaper to actually hire teams in Europe. So I think that's actually, to some extent, I would say the unfair advantage of European companies selling it to North America, that we can actually build products to some extent cheaper.

was also having great talent in Europe. And then from a go-to-market perspective, I mean, the challenge of Europe is, it's a lot of different countries. And to some extent, the US is maybe a slightly more homogeneous market than selling it to the UK and the Scandinavian countries and Da'a, or like the German-speaking countries and France and Italy.

just managing that complexity is probably something where what's just different from selling into the US in particular.

Yeah, yeah. And when you, you know, there's this whole philosophy around people enablement that you and I share, but you've built the platform around. So I've got a couple people enablement questions just largely around, you know, like, at what stage, let's start here, at what stage should companies start implementing a people enablement platform?

I think that's an interesting question because the pattern we see is serial entrepreneurs that have done it before and seen it before actually introduce people enablement practices effectively earlier. So I think often at the time at the stage of being 30 people, for example, they really start to formalize the performance process, for example, I think a lot of companies already start working with.

setting OKRs even much earlier than that. So I think OKRs is something that oftentimes people start very early, but formalizing the onboarding process, the performance management process, what KPIs are used for a certain role so people know what's expected of them, but also as capabilities, what career paths are expected for someone. I think that is something that more experienced entrepreneurs actually introduce earlier.

And I think already at the stage of maybe 30 to 50 employees, it's also quite valuable to start running surveys, just to even have like a bit of a benchmark or a baseline data for your own company and to start seeing when things are moving maybe into the wrong directions as you scale. So I would say it's actually really, really valuable to start building these foundations early on and make especially like constant feedback habits,

clarity on the values, but also like how you test for them in an interview process, how you onboard to values. Like we as founders run a value onboarding session with every like all new employees, like in cohorts and roughly monthly cohorts and just setting those baseline, but also being intentional of how do you beg them into your

maybe review processes, your communications, and just seeding the culture, but also holding yourselves accountable how you live up to that really, really early on. And I think then the interesting element, I think that often companies maybe do too late is investing into manager effectiveness, because ultimately managers is such an important part of the equation to ultimately be able to.

keep the company aligned, execute on your strategy, make sure you build an environment where people can succeed, retaining the top employees. Managers have such an important role, but at the same time, they're also the folks in the organizations that often have the most pressure because it's coming from all directions. And setting the systems up for managers to be truly effective by training them how to run.

really effective one-on-one meetings. Like my favorite module in Leapsum is actually our meeting module, just to make sure we have a clear agenda for every meeting. I use my own agenda template that I use in all of my one-on-ones consistently. And like training managers how to hold these good one-on-ones to keep that alignment in the organization, to know where the high performers are at, how to retain them.

but also have the hard conversations. I think that is actually something. Building that early on, like, is the rocket fuel for future growth that probably a lot of organizations start way too late with. So I think that's the one thing I would prioritize if not yet done.

And are there any triggers that CEOs, other company leaders, HR, whoever should be looking for to say now is the time?

I mean, I think we all operate in fairly uncertain and complex sort of market environments these days. And I think being able to listen in to what's going on in the organization through surveys, for example, just have a database of like, where's the organization at, where are people at risk? I think that is actually something that's I feel like it should be part of everyone's like management toolbox.

And then also just in these times where everyone, I mean, or I think generally in tech companies, resources are a lot less free than they were before and everyone needs to operate more efficiently. I think it's even more important to actually stay truly aligned across the organization to achieve more with less. So making sure the mechanisms are in place to.

really ensure that everyone understands where we're heading, where we're at, what their role is, what the key levers are, whether that's OKRs and meeting management or there's another way to do how you do it in your organization, just making really, really sure that alignment is there. But also making sure there's clarity on the performance processes. And I think what people often get wrong is people think about performance as measuring.

But I think the first step of good performance management is clear expectations. So does everyone in the organization and that also directly fields into alignment, know what's expected of them? What are they accountable for? What's sort of the KPIs they're expected to deliver? So really ensuring that we have that clarity of what's expected. And then also being able to hold folks accountable to make sure you very much also know who your high performers are and do the right things to particularly retain them.

That's basically our mentality has always been like, we don't think people enablement as separate performance and OKR survey processes. We actually think of it like an operating system of very integrated processes. So for example, segmenting your survey data.

by your performance data so you understand what the high performance in the organization really care about. And then it really, because then I can tackle that with priority, then it actually generates the business impact I wanna have. So really thinking about it as that operating system where one process feeds into another, manager effectiveness for us is something that's really top of mind. And for example, what does it mean for us? We've shipped a lot of AI functionality recently where we support managers to write.

better, I mean, actually, frankly, also other employees, like all users, but I think it's particularly important for managers, how to write better OKRs, how to write better feedback, how to generate action plans directly from the survey data, and just really making that data more actionable or actually helping you to produce better, better...

that's input in terms of reviews or development objectives or OKRs. And I think that ultimately moves the needle for the business.

Mm-hmm.

All right. Last question before we hop into the founder five. So that question is, what has you most excited about next year? Life, business, you name it.

I mean, just as I mentioned earlier, I think that was maybe even before we pressed the recording button, we moved to New York City as a family half a year ago. And the first half year was like getting, really landing here and figuring a lot of things out. And I feel like now we finally like fully here we're planning out 2024 as a company. And I'm just really, really excited to be on the ground in the US with our team.

with our customers, a lot of exciting events coming up next year, but also just to be here with my family, explore the US and just live here, be here. Yeah, fun place to be.

That's incredible. All right. The place to be, that's right, New York City. All right, so five quick hit questions about you and your growth. We call it the Founder Five. It's really just to learn a little bit more. So number one, the key metric or KPI that you are relentlessly focused on.

Thanks for watching!

to growth.

All right, top tip for growth stage founders like yourself.

Build the systems to keep your company fully aligned.

favorite book or podcast that has helped you to grow.

Kim Scott, Radical Kenda.

Ah, good one, good one. Piece of advice that counters traditional wisdom.

you can build a company grow really fast while being bootstrapped.

Alright, and what is going to be the title of your autobiography?

constantly learning.

That's good. Dot, dot, dot. You've given a ton to our listeners here today, Jenny. So time for a little bit of self promotion as we close things off. How how can those listening help you out?

I mean, I believe every company needs Leapsum nowadays. I think we wouldn't be where we are as a company if we hadn't been eating our own dog food big time. So I'd love to hear about people's, or like other founders and executives, current people and organizational challenges. And I mean, ultimately we cannot build businesses without making our people successful. And I'd love to hear about your challenges and discuss how we can actually help you solve those.

Excellent. Jenny, and what is the best way for people to get in touch with you?

I mean, I'm very active on LinkedIn and that's probably the best way to get in touch. And yeah, I'd love to connect with people, discuss common challenges and take it from there.

Thank you so much for joining today, Jenny. This has been a pleasure.

Awesome. Jim, what a lovely podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. Hold on one second. Do you mind just saying your name and first and last name?

Jenny Prudevitz. Awesome. Now, of course, sorry, I think there was one Slack notification. I don't know. Was that on my end?

That way we get it right. Thank you very much. All right. And then I need.