How the idea of Whatagraph was born?

It came quite naturally as we have our own marketing agency before. It was more like a visual and brand identity studio, to be specific. But some part of our business was also to create and run campaigns for the customers. And for me it was quite obvious, because we were a high-scale agency. We mostly worked with bigger customers, bigger budgets, and bigger projects - it wasn't 25 customers per month, more like 2-3 customers per month, or sometimes even per quarter. So it was quite demanding to deliver high-level services basically. For me, reporting was also quite a high-level requiring thing, so I thought like maybe let's try combining really boring things such as website analytics data with infographics and showing instead of I don't know let's say 20% of bounce rate, showing that one out of 5 people leave your website within 10 seconds. You just select what kind of sources you use then our system does all the work. It basically visualizes, suggests what kind of data you should look at, and even automates that report sending to the customers.

I love it. I love when ideas are being born organically, out of the things you do daily. And how big is the company now?

Company people wise - it's about 100 people, maybe even over the 100. It fluctuates all the time, with startups it's hard to say exact numbers most of the time. So yeah, that's around 100 people for some time already. In terms of the company stage and venture funding - we're post series A.

That's a great story. I love it. Well, I believe you had a lot of hiring having 100 people in a company. What were the main lessons learned?

Hiring - I think it's the word that you hear all the time within the startup, since the day one - once you start this carousel, it never ends. I think there are two factors to that. So there are constantly people who you need to replace sometimes because the company grew faster than the person. We're trying now to get rid of that problem and trying to invest in the talent which we already have. But also, there's growing - as a result, you need more hands and need more people to solve some issues. So, hiring is quite a consistent topic already for us, for a year or so. And I remember the first days of building this business - hiring was super fun, it's nice to know that you're able to hire a lot of people, you're able to employ a lot of guys and girls, and that's quite nice, but eventually, it becomes a complicated process that you need a deligated person for, a person who just hire, a person to maintain. In our case, we have nearly 20 different nationalities within the company - it becomes even more complicated. For me it looked really nice that we're able to hire people in Nigeria, Kenya, Italy, US, Australia. It brings a lot of new perspectives, but it also comes with a price. Because you need to manage all different cultures, all different outlooks, and views. It's interesting, if you have a problem I think it's a thing you should work on. I wouldn't even say that's a problem, more like a challenge. It's interesting thing to work on.

It's very nice when you think about the talent attraction. But when it comes to talent retention - it's a different story, right? You need to work more and it's not as easy as attracting someone. So I believe you had some failures and maybe you have some lessons learned for yourself that you can share. What are the takeaways out of this experience?

That's a good question. I would say, in general, we don't have a bad retention rate. At the worst time, when we were failing most after series A, we had 15 % only - that's still not much. And a lot of people - we still have them from day one. I think we made a failure due to a need for high growth. I think every founder of the company most of the time does that. They start reading some articles or talking with advisors who say to just hire later stage people, from "been there, done that" thing who would come in and just solve things. I think we did that. And it's a major mistake that you can make - I got it as a good advice from one of my friends, who said that you shouldn't be skipping on the culture and values. I think this was what we did. So we started to look at experiences on their LinkedIn instead of looking at the people. And then we needed to actually separate our ways with those people, who we hired and believed a lot in. What we noticed, some people that we hired, were from very good companies and had tons of experience, they really looked nice and they were great people. But I think the biggest problem was there wasn't that much of a match in cultural values. It's not that people were toxic -  it's more about what kind of values and culture they like and are used to represent and what kind of culture and values you have within the company. In our case, we're super focused on the people who are more like hustlers, let's say mentality. They really are in love with owning things. First of all and then delivering, instead of having clear guidelines, processes and ect. In our case, in our company, of course we have processes and frameworks already - but they still are not that hardcore. I think everything starts with me - I really like having decision freedom and owning situations within the business. And then, for example, our CFO - she, for example, owns finance and I don't go there and I don't tell her how to run things. Instead, she comes to me and tells me what are the issues. And that's freedom with a lot of responsibility and accountability. What we're trying to do now is to set a clear responsibility area for a person. But then we relaly want to hold them to account. It's more about not having a lot KPIs for people, but instead about having accountability areas and giving that freedom to them. But you need to make sure that people are okay with that freedom because there are people who are not okay with it and freedom makes crazy. They just can't go and work in that kind of fashion. Freedom is way more harder than no freedom. And people think the opposite. Usually, freedom means you even need to work more rather than less. Sometimes people mix it that they can even not show up for work while having that freedom. But I think we're getting better at that.

But how can it be - if you are a high-level manager, can you expect that you won't be accountable or responsible for that specific area?

So I think especially in developing countries, I would call it even, we're still not that used to those things that much. And especially young people who usually work in startups. They're not that experienced being real C- level executives or even VP level executives because most of them are 3- 4 years in their careers. I think they still look at that C-level more like "Okay, I've been there done that for like 4 years and I expect my salary to represent that and my status within the company" but they still look at the job more like as a just regular employee in a bigger salary. I think they expect also some quite clear guidelines from their manager to direct them, where they need to go. And I think what's changing now - it's super nice to see that for example, in our case - is that some people who are in our company for some time are now being promoted to managers and C-levels. They understand because they've been in this culture for some time, they know what kind of expectations we have, what kind of expectations I do set and that we're not gonna provide a clear plan on how they need to act. We don't sit down and do a clear week-by-week plan what they need to work on.

Could you give an example of when you hired a C- level manager and how was it going? When did you notice that the person is looking for your assistance even if they are a manager of the department?

Yeah, so I think we had this issue couple of times. Usually, they don't say that but you can clearly understand it because people start to jump from one thing to another - and they start doing this and then that, one week one thing is important next week another thing. They're just searching for the silver bullet and I think they look at the things from the day-to-day perspective and I think what is expected more or less from C-level and VP level  - people owning the whole thing and then they can translate that information to their direct reports and just chunk the work into smaller pieces. The head of the department does the general vision and strategy and then there are people who do tactical moves, and then there are those actual movers. We had one position, I will not name a field, because I think it's quite easy to identify, but it was not my direct report, it was other person's direct report - a person who spent half a year in the company and later he left. Later we found out that he left for a bigger organization. He was used to having clear actions, which were demanding him to do this and that, and he wanted less freedom in kind of way of like making decisions. More like clear directions on where he needed to work and what he needs nearly to do most of the time. So, for some people, freedom becomes basically jail for them. They just don't know what to do and they don't feel if they're moving to any direction.

But when you were interviewing them, I believe you told them about the challenges - and what you're expecting for that specific positions. Why do you think there was a mismatch? I believe you told them what you expect. They also wanted to join a company, because of becoming a C-level manager. How could you not understand that from the very beginning? Where's the catch?

I think, all those interviews, especially in startups, usually in earlier phases, you just hire the first-time person. So they need to build everything from scratch and it's really hard to ask questions that you don't know yourself. Another thing is everyone wants to look good in interviews and most of the time you just mention to people, like okay you're going to need to do this and that, and this is your responsibility area. And they understand that, and then you don't go that much into specifics. I never saw the perfect job interview process, because either it's too long or it's not informative enough so you still need to bet a lot during those.

Yeah, of course. You cannot make the decision and be hundred percent sure only by interviewing. But were those people from huge corporations? It's still hard to understand - if you decide to be a C-level manager, how can you expect not to be accountable?

It's not like they do not expect to be accountable. It's more about the way how they like to work. It it the accountability, let's say size, the pace, the expectations from the company. Those are the things what limits you to understand those things. Especially when you hire from bigger corporates - I think it's quite tough, especially in the first times, because you just have this fact in your mind. Like "oh, this guy was in Microsoft for like 10 years so he definitely knows what to do". And you just build that story for yourself. Because of course you don't get application like 15 people who's one is from Microsoft, another is from Google, third one is from Apple. You just have one shot - you see that the person might be a good fit. You have a chat with him and then it looks like it's going to work but of course, that person also doesn't know if that's going to work or not because he never worked in a small organization. He joined Microsoft when it was big. It became even bigger when he was there and then he just decided to go into the startup world. And eventually, the skillset developed in those organisations is completely different than what's required in the startups. I think our biggest lesson is again, not to look that much into what companies they were in, but what were they doing there. Mainly day-to-day, not in general scope. And then you can bet, like "okay, he was managing 20 people so maybe he'll be able to manage". It's super tough still to understand, you need to go through those lessons and you can't prepare for them. One thing that we never looked at was the diploma of the university. We never look at it, I think it never defines a person within a startups, it can tell you nothing. Except, for example "he was in Stanford, so he might be clever". Most of the time. But it's still not that much that you look at, it's not definitely a main thing. And I think again, companies that they have worked at, it can say something, but you need to know the bigger story - you know, how long, where, why he stayed, why he left. Sometimes you can sit in the corporate for 3 years and nobody will notice.

Does it mean that you're not hiring people from bigger companies anymore?

No, we are not declining people from big companies. We just look at them the same way we look at the people we hire from small organizations. I think we're just used to like, "oh look, this guy is from Google, he's definitely great", you just give him A's already, everywhere, despite the fact, that you haven't even been speaking with that person. So I think it's more - you still need to treat all the people the same and ask them the right questions and really be sure about the personal values of people. Because those never fail. If we hire the right people, who really match our point of view, values and culture, I think they can become great. We have tons of experiences of growing, people who joined as juniors, but they were on a really fast track to high-level positions. Of course there are some risks with that, they don't have that much of experience. But I think experience is a thing that can be built quite fast, and especially within the startups. Your knowledge, what you used to know, your knowledge that you had 5 years ago, might be irrelevant already and it's constantly changing.

What about the stereotype that people working in huge corporations, they all have structure or strategy which came from the hiring management level? How can they be free to create a strategy themselves then, if they're used so much to get it from someone else?

I think, that's the biggest disadvantage of working in big corporates. You start to get used to work in processes and frameworks, that's how you operate. If I need to do something, I go to this person, if I need to do this, I go to this person. Everything is done for you. You kind of think, but actually don't think that much. You just operate in some kind of frameworks and what you require is discipline. I think it spoils people eventually and they don't know how to operate. I don't know if it's a good comparison or not - but let's look at nature. There are some animals that are born and raised in a zoo - and then try to release them to the nature - they just don't know how to find food, they don't know a lot of things.The same goes for people if they spend too much time in corporates.

And you also mentioned hiring women, that you are hiring women, for management positions. Maybe you could share a story about the first hire? How did it go? It's a tech company - was the person welcomed?

So, actually we don't hire specifically women. It's more like we hire people. And let's say in our case it happened, that they were women, so we don't look differently in these situations. And I think it went good - I mean since the beginning, I can't even say that it was something different. I think in a natural way of organizational work - I think it's nice, because women usually brings a bit of a calmness and let's say more structured conversations, rather then sometimes ego or temperament played things, so I think that enables, so I think that diversity is on, and if you go to one side that's also not good, then there are other issues, that's why I think in the world we created a way to operate all together, so I think mixed groups work the best. I couldn't specify anything differently except that.

Whatagraph team is very much diverse, right? You mentioned 20 nationalities.

Yeah, I think we have all religions in the company.

Awesome! But I believe you still should have challenges with that - of course, it's a very good combination, you can get great ideas. But sometimes the cultural differences give you some challenges, right?

What I like about our team is that it's super open to everything. Maybe it comes with the younger generation, everyone saw the world and for you it's not something crazy that you come into the office and you see a person of different skin colour. It's just normal, it should be. I think that came from earlier times, when it was strange to see a different person in the street. Now we have some people who are wearing some religious outfit, you know nobody questions that and they just treat them as a normal person. It's not like you look at it and for 3 weeks you can't stop looking at it. We haven't experienced any issues - usually all the things come through my eyes and ears, and if there are some issues, that's why I think we are an open culture also, is that people are not afraid to talk to me or others and mention that there are some issues. We never had some kind of conflicts between people, usually people mention that one of the main things, why they like to work here, is the people. Sometimes I was thinking if it's good or not, that maybe they should be passionate about the product, that we're building. But eventually I think it's good that they like it here because of the people.You can always change the product, you can pivot it, you can go to one side or another, and some people might be not happy about it, if you change something. Like, "oh, I started to work in fintech and now I started to sell cars, I don't want to work in this business anymore, because it's not interesting."  But if you like people you work with, it's super good and you can do everything together, it's like this story from children books "with my friends, I can conquer the world", that's more of a thing. Also, we don't invest a lot in that, we just let everyone be themselves and I think sometimes you don't need to invest that much into the culture and values, it's about letting the culture develop itself and help a bit to navigate it. Not to get to extreme end let's say, but you just let it flow. That's why I think we have that good culture within the company.

When you mentioned that you have all the religions in your company - I remembered my time working in Bahrain. There are some simple traditions, such as the month of Ramadan. So people are fasting, and work hours for them are shorter. Is it easy to navigate, because why one person could work not as long as another person? Did you notice any struggle in that?

I think in our case, we don't have super religious people over. We don't have - I don't know if it's extreme or not, but for example we have muslims who are giving prayers more. So maybe our people are not that religious, but coming from those religions. So if we have a case when they need something special or space, we're just happy to do it. Others are understanding because we're different. It's the same with going to the bathroom - maybe some people need to go 5 times a day meanwhile others need to go only twice. Everyone accepts each other. And by being different, we're also the same.

Yeah, there are some companies counting time for the bathroom, for example, call centers. I used to have this experience myself.

Yeah, but I think they're not that popular anymore.

Especially in startups, it would be pretty amazing to see that in a startup. Okay, great. So thank you Justas so much for sharing your stories and thank you to all the listeners for listening and for more podcasts please visit http://jobrely.com.

Yeah, thanks for inviting me, and have a good day.