Hubert Palan di Productboard

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Jeroen: Hi, Hubert. It’s great to have you on Founder Coffee.

Hubert: Ciao!

Jeroen: You’re Founder of Productboard. For those who don’t know Productboard yet, what does your company do?

Hubert: Certo, sì, grazie per avermi invitato. È un piacere. In Productboard aiutiamo i team di prodotto e i creatori di prodotti a realizzare prodotti davvero eccellenti. Prodotti che contano per le persone.

What it means in day to day is that our customers’ product teams at some of the leading companies out there use Productboard to centralize research and user feedback and understand what really matters to their customers, by means of having a centralized repository for insights from the market, customers and prospects through what customer success or customer support team professionals are hearing.

Then based on that they prioritize ideas and feature requirements. And they organize them in a hierarchy that’s actually manageable, unlike flat backlogs somewhere in JIRA.

You can create and organize hierarchy in Productboard, and then put it on the roadmap, and make sure that everyone around the company is aligned on what’s being built and why.

Abbiamo anche un portale che i clienti possono impostare per raccogliere insight dai loro clienti senza fare interviste o senza parlare direttamente con i clienti. Vi aiuta a raccogliere gli insight su scala.

Jeroen: Sì, perfetto. Quindi, in un certo senso centralizza e professionalizza la gestione dei prodotti.

Hubert: It’s a CRM for product management. Product managers at Zendesk or Shopify are our customers, and it’s their go to tool. Every day, they go there and they go to find out what’s new, what customers are saying, especially when they want to make a product decision. They see all the features that are being considered and then ultimately prioritize and see the status of it progressing. It’s the product brain of the company.

Jeroen: E di solito si utilizzano diversi strumenti per gestire tutte queste cose.

Hubert: Correct, no spreadsheets, no PowerPoints, no Evernote notes, no emails floating everywhere. It’s all in one place.

Jeroen: Capito. Il suo background personale è la gestione dei prodotti?

Hubert: Sì, ho conseguito un master in informatica e ingegneria del software e poi un MBA a Berkeley. Ho creato una sorta di ponte tra il mondo tecnologico e quello aziendale. Ho trascorso diversi anni in ruoli di gestione dei prodotti, prima nella consulenza presso Accenture a Praga. Poi, dopo la scuola di economia, ho lavorato nella Valley in un paio di startup.

And then at GoodData where I went to be VP of Products. That’s the reason why Productboard exists. Because I was a product manager myself and I understood the pain. And I figured, hey, let’s change that. Let’s solve the pain.

Jeroen: In quale momento esatto avete deciso di avviare Productboard? A cosa stavate lavorando? Dove eravate e con chi?

Hubert: I’ve always been inspired by people who create great products. And real excellent products will resonate with people, not just on a functional level. Not just like “okay, this works well”, but also on the emotional level. On the level where it actually invokes specific emotions.

I’ve read all the books and everything I could find on people like Steve Jobs obviously, but also Phil Knight of Nike and Disney as a company and even other CEOs of fast growing startups. Especially those that have some strong brands or have some promotional appeal.

Ho sempre pensato: come sarà stato quando Steve Jobs è salito sul palco e ha lanciato il primo iPhone? So che Apple è un'analogia abusata, ma il pensiero era: com'era il senso di orgoglio, di soddisfazione e di realizzazione? Perché l'intero team sapeva che questo avrebbe cambiato radicalmente la vita di molte persone.

Il motivo per cui lo sapevano era che comprendevano davvero molto bene le esigenze dei clienti. Hanno trascorso molto tempo ad analizzare, prototipare, testare e armeggiare con tante versioni diverse. Si sono impegnati a fondo e si sono concentrati sulla creazione di qualcosa di piacevole.

That’s something that I was always wondering and then when I … after business school and after Steve Blank, the founder of the Lean Startup, was my professor at Berkeley, and the whole lean startup movement was happening: “get out of the building” and “talk with customers” and all that.

I got super excited and then I took off. The reality hit here and I started discovering what it’s really like at many of the companies here. Even in the heart of Silicon Valley. And I found that most companies are driven by sales. Like “hey, we sold a deal and there’s a feature request”. Or they’re driven by engineering where you’re building stuff just because you think it’s cool, but you don’t really know whether someone needs it.

Jeroen: Assolutamente.

Hubert: Nell'azienda in cui mi trovavo, GoodData, stavamo costruendo un'ottima piattaforma di BI, ma la cultura era prevalentemente una cultura di vendita. La cosa mi frustrava. Volevo assicurarmi che le decisioni si basassero sulla comprensione delle reali esigenze dei clienti, anziché su ciò che veniva venduto dal team di vendita.

That was the inspiration. The inspiration was “hey, let’s create a system”.

And of course, if you have a founder who just tells you “Shut up. This is what you need to do. And that’s how product management is done.”, then your get stuck. You first need to figure out how to create the moment of revelation or enlightenment first. Then slowly go and change the culture. Change it into a product driven, a customer driven one. Make sure that you have the deep insight and that you a have solid product strategy and then you can execute.

Anyway, a long answer but it was the motivation. The company where I was at was a B2B SaaS company, $100 million, well $75 million budget, raised by the time I had left, with Andreessen Horowitz and other top investors. I went to see many of our customers’ business, because we were a BI platform. I interacted on a daily basis with senior leadership at other companies. We were analyzing their businesses and I saw how they operate, and how they ran their product teams as well.

That was the motivation. I said: “Come on, we have all these task management tools like JIRA that are great for engineering, but there is nothing that would help you with deciding what should be on top of the backlog in the first place.”

Jeroen: Esattamente. Avete uno strumento per gestire i clienti. Ne avete uno per gestire lo sviluppo, ma la gestione del prodotto si colloca nel mezzo.

Hubert: Where is this system where you have … In most engineering systems, you have entities in the logical model like features, stories, tasks, … It’s all solution centric. Here are all the features that you want to have; let’s break them down into manageable chunks and let’s push them through the engineering pipeline.

Non esiste un'entità che rappresenti un cliente, un'esigenza, un problema, un'importanza o un'urgenza. Nessuna delle cose che la gestione dei prodotti tiene sotto controllo è rappresentata nel modello logico del sistema.

You have some of the stuff in CRM systems. There you have customers, but it’s very sales focused. It’s about what happens before they become a customer and about seeing them go through the stages.

Creiamo un sistema che aiuti le persone ad avere un piccolo senso di orgoglio e di realizzazione per ogni funzionalità che lanciano come addetti ai prodotti. Per avere qualcosa che sostenga le loro decisioni, per avere qualcosa che dia loro fiducia. Per avere qualcosa che crei trasparenza in tutto il team.

During the process of building products, people make decisions throughout the whole development life cycle. From the initial research stages, to design, testing and development and product marketing and the whole go-to-market. If everyone throughout this life cycle isn’t very well aligned around the needs of the customers, and if all the people don’t understand very well what matters to the customers, then they will inevitably make the wrong decisions throughout the product development process.

Capito.

Hubert: Maybe they design a feature in a little different way because they don’t understand the user. Especially if you’re building a B2B system, and you’re designing system for someone who is not you, then it’s more difficult. It’s about creating this shared understanding for everyone on the team. Only then excellent products can happen.

Jeroen: Sì.

Hubert: I talked to a guy who was an advisor of mine. He was at Apple, 20 years ago. He was on the QA team there. And he said that the difference at Apple was that — typically in other companies the QA, quality assurance team, says “Look, here’s the spec and test it against the spec. It doesn’t work as specified.” — and he said that the difference at Apple was that when he was there that his job wasn’t to sign off on the spec. His job was to sign off on: “Is the customer going to use it the way it’s built?”

That creates a very different mindset, because suddenly you are asked to think about what matters to the customers and about the real use case, the real flow, as opposed to just what’s in the spec. It’s a subtle shift, but it has some major implications, if you create a culture like that.

Jeroen: We try to cope with it personally by… We have issues and features, but then there is an in between point where it’s not broken, and it’s not like we didn’t intend to make it like that. It’s just not working for the customer. We label this a “UX improvement”.

Si tratta di un tipo diverso di lavoro di sviluppo. Si tratta di assicurarsi di costruire l'Salesflare nel modo in cui le persone lo useranno effettivamente, o di adattarlo al modo in cui vorrebbero usarlo.

And we take these “UX improvements” even more seriously than issues sometimes.

Hubert: Sì, sì, bene.

Jeroen: We’re still doing without Productboard, but we’re looking at it.

Hubert: Sure, you’ll come around eventually. [laughs] Everyone will.

Jeroen: Hai sempre saputo di voler fare una startup o è una cosa che ti è venuta in mente quando eri in GoodData?

Hubert: Have I always known? Of course, I didn’t know. Well in life, are you asking me at the age of eight, did you know that…

Jeroen: Always, I don’t know. But with always I mean from the moment you were actually thinking about professional stuff. Did you feel like you want to start your own company or did this just come at some moment?

Hubert: Yeah, I think that it was on the back of my mind, but the environment where I grew up… I grew up in Czechoslovakia and then in Czech Republic. I’m almost 40. I’ll be 40 this year. It wasn’t the most entrepreneurial culture to start with.

When I go down to college or my masters, I was like: “hey, what am I going to do”. I studied computer science, so I wanted to be in the digital world, but then I figured: “I want to see how companies are run and how companies operate”. That’s why I went to consulting and then I joined Accenture in systems integration consulting and then in business strategy consulting, but still within the technical realm.

At the moment when I started seeing how banks work, and insurance companies and those large group corporations. Then I figured: “Oh my God, this is terrible. And things can be done so much better.” That was the motivation for me to say “I’m going to build my own company one day.”

Odiavo la politica e ho sempre voluto lavorare in un'azienda in cui tutti, compresi gli inservienti, fossero orgogliosi di lavorare per l'azienda. Dove le persone si identificassero con la missione.

I never understood people who work at companies just for the money. Why don’t you go do something that you actually love and make money? Of course, in our world, we are lucky in the sense that, if you’re an artist, it’s harder to make money and do what you love. In tech or business, you get both.

Jeroen: We can do what we love and earn money if we’re successful.

Hubert: Right. It’s a big game for us.

Jeroen: For them chances are also there, but they’re much smaller.

Hubert: Yeah, yeah. The scale, it’s the aspect of scale.

Jeroen: It’s maybe also more objective than being an artist. As an artist, you create something and if you can convince people that it’s nice… While probably in our trade there’s much more of a… if you build a nice product, at least you have a bigger chance of being successful, or don’t you think so?

Hubert: Sicuramente.

Jeroen: Or do you think it’s all marketing?

Hubert: No, no, no. I think that in products the art, that’s kind of the emotional side. And taste is acquired, but you can also influence the taste of other people if you’re consistent, if you have a strong vision.

I like creating things that are practical. Both functional and emotional. Products that solve problems. That’s why I love art and architecture and design as a discipline.

But ultimately, I want to see it apply to something that advances people’s lives.

Jeroen: Lei ha iniziato come consulente aziendale e le piacciono l'arte e l'architettura. È qualcosa che deriva dalla sua famiglia o dai suoi genitori?

Hubert: Yeah, probably. Now we’re getting really deep. My great-grandfather was a diplomat and he died in a concentration camp during the Nazi Germany.

And my mom was in marketing. She ran marketing for Hewlett-Packard in Czech Republic — Slovakia, and then for Olympus. I’ve always thought about the soft side of things more than your typical techy guy. And empathy and emotions. I just think it’s so important in product management. And I talk to many product managers, and they’re analytical and very functionally oriented: “Let’s solve the problem.”

Fast moving consumer goods companies, the P&Gs and so on, they’re much better in general in the discipline of product management. They’ve been doing research and are making sure that they understand the needs. They have been thinking with emotions.

But in the tech world, it hasn’t been the case. Even brands and big successful companies like Salesforce, they have a huge followership, but if I say “Salesforce”, does it make you feel warm and fuzzy or something? It’s not like if I say “Nike”. You have an emotional reaction. If I say “Apple”, you have an emotional reaction.

Zendesk had a great brand with the buddha and Zen, because that resonated so well with the customer support people. You’re under stress and people complain, unless your product or service is excellent.

Intercom is doing a great job. It’s being human, but there’s not that many companies like that. The kind of traditional brand and emotional marketing… you don’t see it that much in tech. It’s always about the functional benefits.

Jeroen: Maybe that has a bit to do with the type of companies they’re marketing to. If you’re like Salesforce, you market to enterprises. They find specs lists interesting. While small companies will go much more for the more consumer type marketing where you have emotions and not ROI or something.

Hubert: Totally, I get it, and of course you can say that in enterprise and in B2B the customer is not the user. The buyer is not the user. Therefore, it’s much more about functional requirements and of course this is the case if you’re selling large enterprise deals. You’re dealing with procurement people and that’s a different persona.

At the same time, I think that the consumerization of the enterprise is happening and I read this article just last week in Harvard Business Review. It was a pyramid of needs and you still have the emotional aspects high up. The sense of pride and showing others that you’re competent and just striving at your job and feeling amazing. It’s important even in the enterprise.

I think that it’s changing more and more. And you see it, really in the long term. The user experience I believe is the only sustainable competitive advantage. Because functional aspects can be copied. They are being copied. More and more and faster and faster.

But the emotional piece, the appeal. How it makes you feel and what you got to believe in and why we’re using the tool, that’s something that’s much, much harder to copy. Look at Apple. That’s been their play all along. Of course, the products are great in terms of functionality as well, but the emotional appeal, the delight that it creates…

Of course, it’s a different segment, there’s multiple segments in the market. Not everyone is their ideal target customer and not everyone cares about that. But for the segment that they go after, it matters a lot.

If you just match the features but don’t match the emotional appeal, then people are going to switch.

Jeroen: A quale altra startup o fondatore guarda con ammirazione e perché?

Hubert: I mentioned the big guys. The big successful companies because there’s a long history of what you can study, and there is a history of what they did and how they turned out.

Of course, in hindsight it’s always 20/20, and you kind of forget the bad things, and maybe you connect the dots in a more idealistic way than it really happened.

But still there is more to study. So that’s why I mentioned companies like Nike, Apple, and I even mentioned Zendesk and Intercom.

The Intercom team is inspiring to me. I’ll also look to companies that are in different industries, not necessarily just who’s around here in the Valley.

I put together this blog post and it’s on my Medium. I collected videos of 20 top unicorn companies’ CEOs. I put it all on this one feed and I watched it. I really wanted to see how the CEOs and founders of all these top companies, how they are and I wanted to see how they speak in real life, because there’s so much more you can get from the sense of who they are as people.

Jeroen: You’ll be happy to follow this series as well then. The founder of Intercom, well one of them at least, Des Traynor, is also going to be on.

Hubert: Sì, conosco Des. Des è un grande.

Jeroen: That’s going to be cool.

Hubert: I just read this book called “Mastery”. There’s a lot of examples and case studies about the biggest people overall. The biggest inventors and stories of the biggest people of humanity.

I look for examples of people that I know are amazing and I spend more time studying them. I obviously see founders around me who I think are real people. But for me, personally, the biggest inspiration comes from people that really dedicated their lives. Veterans in medicine or architecture or biology. It doesn’t matter. The passion and the focus and the excitement with which they live their lives. How they really stay focused and how they didn’t waste their life doing things that are not important.

They really realized that life is short and that we need to work hard. It comes down to excellence for me. And the strive for excellence in everything that you do. Sorry, I didn’t give you examples of recent startup founders that I find inspiring. But Darwin was super inspiring to me in what he did and by his persistence.

Jeroen: That’s cool. In terms of how this reflects on your ambitions: where do you want to go with Productboard? You want to make it really big?

Hubert: Sì, credo che stiamo creando una categoria completamente nuova.

The product management discipline is at the heart of every company. Whether you’re creating digital products or physical products or even services; you are combining the deep customer insight. Your strategic approach to how you’re going to get to where you want to go. How you’re going to form the vision and the execution.

In every company there’s people who are making product decisions. It doesn’t have to be necessarily someone who has a “product manager” title. But there are people who make product decisions.

Penso che il mercato per noi sia enorme, nel senso che abbiamo clienti che non sono solo digitali.

Although our ideal customers are people who are making digital products. Don’t take me wrong. Like SaaS products or e-commerce platforms or apps.

Il fatto che il software stia divorando il mondo e che tutto venga digitalizzato ci aiuta.

There’s what I call digital product managers. But we even have customers like an RV manufacturer up in Canada or an exoskeletal device company. Because with physical products, you collect feedback and you improve that as well. You have more constraints.

The market in a sense is big. Product management is one of the last functions in any company that hasn’t had a very good toolset.

Ci sono CRM e strumenti di gestione delle attività di ingegneria. Nel settore delle risorse umane c'è Workday. Ci sono gli strumenti di business intelligence per l'analisi. Poi c'è l'automazione del marketing. Abbiamo il successo dei clienti.

Tutti questi settori dispongono di software dedicati che aiutano a svolgere meglio il loro lavoro. Ma la gestione dei prodotti è rimasta bloccata. Quindi, credo che abbiamo il potenziale per possedere questa categoria.

Eccellenza del prodotto. Voglio che le aziende pensino alla gestione dei prodotti come all'eccellenza dei prodotti.

Jeroen: La sua ambizione è fondamentalmente quella di professionalizzare la gestione dei prodotti e di avere il mondo pieno di grandi prodotti.

Hubert: You’re an expert in sales, right? Think before CRM how sales were done. You would have a spreadsheet and you would have a Rolodex. You had business cards and you would try not to forget things.

And then CRMs, customer relationship management systems, standardized the process, created transparency, increase the predictability, lowered the risk that you’re not going to hit your number. Because you have the system in place.

Of course, you always have genius outliers, who will sell because they’re charming. They are the outliers. But most of your sales team is going to sell well if they have a good process, if they’re consistent, and if they do the hard work. If they follow up and do the day to day.

Product management is the same thing. I’m not saying that because of a system, you will suddenly turn into Apple, and you will be turning out the best of the best products. But I’m saying that thanks to a solution like Productboard, for product excellence, the chances of launching better products in the market and the chances of eliminating the risk and increasing the predictability of success are going to go up.

Like in sales, like in customer support… If you suddenly have a system, it’s organized, there’s transparency. If a product manager leads your team, the knowledge stays in the company. It doesn’t walk out of the door. All that is contributing.

That’s a big opportunity for us.

Jeroen: Sì, assolutamente. Molto bello. Sarebbe bello se un maggior numero di prodotti software fosse effettivamente un prodotto migliore.

Hubert: Sì, il software è difficile nel senso che ha molti più vincoli rispetto ai prodotti hardware.

There’s this joke in the design world. There’s this picture floating around of a remote control that has hundred buttons or so. You need just two to change the channels and change the volume. You can screw up and you can create an over complicated product even in the physical world.

But in the software world, you don’t have the physical boundaries and it feels easy and cheap to just shove another feature into the product. And think “That’s okay, not everyone will use it.” That’s a danger and that’s why it’s harder. The constraints are much more relaxed.

If you do it right, you can actually create infinite variations of your product and the user experience wouldn’t be impacted for any of the customer segments that you’re serving, as long as they would be exposed to the complexity of all the different variations.

The only problem is that it’s very difficult to create a product like that and make sure that the features are really hidden completely, so that you don’t end up with the ribbon in Microsoft Office, where you have so much stuff and you don’t need most of it.

If I didn’t see it, if I’m not the type of customer who needs it, I shouldn’t even see it. Then it’s fine.

But that’s not the reality. That’s not how the software products are built.

Jeroen: They’re more built to show a lot of features that people are looking for, instead of making it easy to actually use those features.

Hubert: Sì, la maggior parte dei prodotti. Non tutti. Ci sono delle eccezioni, ma la maggior parte.

Jeroen: Cool. Do you think that if you win the lottery tomorrow you’d still be working at Productboard, or would you choose to do something else?

Hubert: It’s like a baby. You know it as a founder. It’s your baby. You want to see it grow up. I want to see it grow up.

Se vincessi la lotteria, potrei raccogliere meno denaro dai VC e investire la vincita nella mia azienda.

But I really like what I’m doing. I believe in the vision.

Jeroen: That’s cool.

Hubert: Maybe I wouldn’t put all my money into it.

In realtà ho letto la precedente intervista che avete fatto con Adam Hempy. Avete parlato dei finanziamenti dei VC e di tutto il resto. In realtà mi piace l'aspetto della partecipazione di VC, non solo per i soldi, ma credo che le possibilità di successo siano maggiori se si condivide il successo. Se si coinvolgono più persone e se si interessano più persone al proprio successo.

I found the investors that I’ve had so far helpful in that regard that more people are on your team. More people are trying hard.

Of course, it’s got trade-offs and you’re losing control and all that. But the fact that more people are investing into your success… I think it’s a huge deal.

Jeroen: Do you think they’re really invested in your success? Are they not more invested in their overall portfolio than in specific cases?

Hubert: They look at it from a portfolio perspective. They need someone in their portfolio to succeed. Then the portfolio math works out and they can deliver the ROI that they promised to the investors. That’s something else driving it.

But that means that they want you to succeed, because they want you to be this successful company in the portfolio. I think that from that perspective the incentives are aligned, and I don’t see friction here.

Jeroen: Okay. What is it that you’re busy with right now? What keeps you up at night lately for Productboard?

Hubert: I sleep well. I manage to get my life under control and I manage to distance myself from the stress. There’s this huge business stress. And so many things are happening at the same time. But I told myself that if I’m going to be worried about it, and if I’m going to be stressed out…

Don’t take me wrong, I was so stressed in the early days of the company. There was so much pressure. Everyone tells you, “You’re nuts. This is never going to work.”

I always joked about it. It’s like you have a baby. You just had a baby and you’re walking around and showing it to people and some people say, “Oh my God, this is so beautiful! Congratulations! I wish you all the health.” But with the early stage start up, unfortunately there’s more people who look at the baby and say, “Oh man, I’m sorry that the baby is so sick. It’s not looking good.” Right. You need to get over it.

But right now, we’re doing well and we’re growing. That stress went away a little bit and I managed to distance myself from the day to day.

I have a very strict schedule that I stick to. I planned all my work time, family time, friend time. I have everything in my calendar. I follow the schedule and then I don’t feel like I’m not attending to my family or vice versa to my business. I made a conscious decision of how much time I’m going to dedicate to each.

Of course, it’s not ideal. Sometimes you need to break the rules. But it just gives me this confidence.

Mi alzo alle cinque e vado a correre. Poi vado in ufficio. La mattina ho delle riunioni e poi nel pomeriggio ho un blocco di quattro ore di tempo.

There’s this great book called “The One Thing” that inspired me to do all this. I have an uninterrupted block of time for the most important thing that I’m working on every day. And I have a scheduled time to rip up and plan. It really helped me. I’ve been doing it for several months now and I love it.

Jeroen: What’s that book called?

Hubert: I think it’s called “The One Thing”.

Jeroen: E da chi è scritto?

Hubert: Il libro è di Gary W. Keller e Jay Papasan. The One Thing.

Jeroen: Ok. Allora, ti alzi alle cinque, hai detto?

Hubert: Yeah, well. I’m here in San Francisco and we are distributed. Part of the team is in Prague, in the Czech Republic. So, I need to have an overlap with Europe and in the SaaS business you have customers all around the world. That dictates my schedule.

I’m on the early morning schedule. And I even go to bed early. And I also have a two-year-old baby boy. You can’t sleep in the morning anyway.

Jeroen: Vi siete allineati con il bambino.

Hubert: Esattamente.

Jeroen: A che ora vai a letto? Dormi otto ore o?

Hubert: I try to, yeah. Like I shoot for nine, often times it’s ten, but I shoot for eight hours. I just think you’re more productive.

I’ve done my crazy, crazy years, where I didn’t sleep much and I saw the toll. The physical penalty. You make more mistakes and you don’t think so clearly. It’s not worth it. It’s so not worth it.

I’ve changed. I said: “Look, when I work, I’m going to put the most and best of my skills and effort into it.” At the end of the day what I achieved is what I could have achieved. You can always spend more time, but you can do it tomorrow and not instead of sleeping.

But again, if there’s a big launch. We had a big product launch in November. That is a big deadline and we didn’t sleep and all that, but that’s an exception. It’s an exception. You don’t do that on a regular basis.

Jeroen: Cosa fai per rimanere sano di mente? Vai a correre, hai detto?

Hubert: Corro e mi alleno. Dopo la corsa, c'è un piccolo parco giochi vicino al lago dove corro. Faccio squat, flessioni, trazioni e tutto il resto.

Then I get relaxation, it’s time with my kid and my wife. It’s amazing. It’s a different world.

My wife is a nurse practitioner, which is like a physician or family doctor. That gives me also a perspective, because I come from work and I complain like “Oh, this customer is making it so difficult. The legal contracts. There’s so much friction. I had a bad interview with someone.” And she looks at me and she tells me how people are struggling in their lives and dying.

It’s a completely different perspective. That keeps me in check as well. It brings me to reality. That it’s not all just about making products. And that the vision that I have, that is it’s a big vision, but at the end of the day, you’re in a society with people.

I also pay attention to politics a lot, because it’s just frustrates me that there’s so many things that could be done better. I spend time on that. Even though I wouldn’t say that politics is relaxing. It’s not fun and relaxing unfortunately.

Jeroen: A questo punto della sua startup, quali sono le responsabilità che si assume principalmente? A cosa dedichi la tua giornata?

Hubert: Mostly, it’s hiring because we’re growing and we just need help on so many fronts. I spend most of my time hiring.

And then, we’re like 25, I think, right now. We still don’t have processes for everything.

And some of the more complex legal stuff. I need to be involved and review contracts. I like to understand everything that’s happening in the company. Maybe I should be delegating that more, but I just don’t feel comfortable leaving it just to the lawyers. I actually take the time to really understand every negotiation point that we’re discussing with our large enterprise customers.

Si tratta delle cose più importanti: assunzioni, contratti complessi e processi.

Another big chunk is communication, especially with the distributed team. We have regular updates. I make sure that everyone understands what’s happening in the company.

I’ve seen the different teams create their own culture. There’s a danger that the engineers would start looking down at marketers. “Engineering is the hard shit” and stuff. “Marketing is the easy stuff.” I don’t agree with that at all. I think that every part of the company contributes and I want everyone to understand what’s happening.

So, we take the time to communicate what’s happening and what every team is doing. We make sure that everyone understands the complexities. Everyone can come up with ideas for how to improve anything anywhere, whether it’s marketing, sales, engineering, design, … I spend a lot of time making sure that I know who heard what and making sure that everyone’s involved.

Queste sarebbero probabilmente le aree più importanti.

Jeroen: Quali sono i principali processi o strumenti che utilizzate per farlo? Abbiamo cose come le riunioni di standup. Utilizzate Slack?

Hubert: Yeah, yeah, so we’re on Slack. Everything’s on Slack.

We have a regular all-hands meeting on a weekly basis. On a monthly frequency, the all-hands meeting is more detailed and longer and there is a wrap up for every month and it’s on progress towards the bigger objectives. On a weekly basis, it’s a little more tactical.

Abbiamo una telefonata di prodotto in cui discutiamo di cose specifiche del prodotto. Abbiamo una telefonata sul successo dei clienti. Abbiamo una telefonata di marketing. Tutte le diverse parti dell'azienda.

One thing that we started doing that I really like is that every team sends every day, a very short daily update into a Slack channel. With just a few bullet points of the main things that they achieved that day. That’s a way for everyone in the company to quickly read it every day in the morning. For me, it’s morning. In Europe, it’s the afternoon. To read it and to get a pulse of what’s happening in the company. It’s been working really well from my perspective. I feel like I know what’s happening and I would recommend doing that.

Jeroen: Yeah, that’s kind of like a standup meeting, but on a team level instead of on an individual level.

Hubert: Yeah, but it’s asynchronous. It’s not a standup meeting in the sense that everyone’s in the room and standing.

Jeroen: Yeah, but standup meetings can be asynchronous as well. Here in the office we do it synchronous, but you can use a software like Standuply. You could do it asynchronously. You just basically do it electronically like you’re doing. And it tracks your progress over time. You say what you’ve been doing the day before. What you’re going to do the next day. And that way it helps to stay up to speed with what’s happening.

Hubert: What’s it called? Standuply?

Jeroen: Standuply, yeah. They’re pretty cool guys.

Hubert: I’ll check it out.

Jeroen: They’re from Greece. I met them at a few conferences.

Hubert: Alright, yeah, I remember. I saw that somewhere. I’ll check it out.

Jeroen: We also spend a lot of time communicating, because it’s really important that everybody knows what everybody is up to. Getting to work as a team.

Hubert: Sì.

Jeroen: You mostly talked about communicating the planning. What’s the schedule for the planning? Do you do it bi-weekly, monthly?

Hubert: Certo, sì. Al momento abbiamo tre team. Le cose cambiano, ma nel complesso pianifichiamo in cicli di sei settimane.

Nel ciclo di sei settimane, stabiliamo sempre grandi iniziative o obiettivi che vogliamo raggiungere. Ogni team ha un grande obiettivo, una grande area di interesse verso la quale stabilire le priorità e pianificare i compiti.

Of course, along the line, there’s always a continuous stream running in parallel with opportunistic things I call initiatives, which is something that maybe you’ll prioritize over others, as long as it’s aligned with the strategy and the direction that we’re going. That goes into the prioritization.

There’s several bug also and there’s regulatory things, right. That’s compliance and now GDPR is happening and so all that stuff is running.

Or something that’s external, like a partner of ours is going to be doing a big launch and they need us to prepare something.

Things often happen at the last minute. That’s something that we will then try to squeeze in obviously.

We’re of course using Productboard. We have all the initiatives side by side in columns. It’s like a matrix. You have all the initiatives side by side, and then in rows, you have all the tasks, all the features that we’re working on. You see which feature contributes to which initiative and you see whether it’s a must have, or should have, or nice to have. And then you also have, next to it, columns with progress.

You have this one big picture view of everything that’s happening across all the teams. It scales beautifully, even if you had 10 teams. You can have them side by side and you see it all in one place. And you can filter it and you can slide and dice it the way you want. That’s how we run it.

Jeroen: Tutti possono vedere cosa fanno gli altri.

Hubert: Sì, assolutamente.

Jeroen: You’re working in three locations, you said?

Hubert: Al momento, tecnicamente, abbiamo persone a Praga, San Francisco e Boston.

Jeroen: Perché Boston?

Hubert: We just found a teammate who lives there. And she’s great.

Jeroen: Ok.

Hubert: She reached out to us and she’s in Boston. That’s the way it is.

And two of our developers are in Sri Lanka, working remotely. They’re taking some time off as well, but otherwise they’re working remotely.

It’s the digital nomad approach. It’s not like they do it all the time, but as long as they commit and deliver, my attitude is: “I don’t care where you are in the world.”

Jeroen: Is it different teams that are located in different places? Is development in Prague, customer service in …

Hubert: No. We now have three teams. That team is product management, UX and engineering together as one team. It’s cross functional. Ideally, I would also have product marketing on all the teams, but that’s a shared function right now. That’s how I envision to grow the company.

Potremmo aggiungere un team del genere qui negli Stati Uniti, ma si tratterebbe di nuovo dell'intero team: gestione del prodotto, ingegneria e design tutti insieme.

I’ve seen at my previous company, we had the separation roles. Product management in the US, and engineering and some of the design, or most of the design, in Europe. It’s not optimal, because you need a super short feedback within the team.

Penso che Zendesk abbia agito in modo diverso. Avevano un team. Credo che abbiano ancora dei team in Danimarca, ma hanno un intero team lì. O come Intercom, quando parli con Des, puoi chiederglielo. Avevano il team di onboarding o di crescita qui a San Francisco. Qui hanno riunito la gestione dei prodotti, il design e l'ingegneria. E poi altri team, come quelli della piattaforma e degli altri prodotti, sono stati dislocati in Irlanda.

Invece di separare le persone per ruolo, le collochiamo in team.

Jeroen: Sì, ho capito.

Hubert: That’s how we’re going to do it as well.

Jeroen: Ha iniziato a Praga e poi si è trasferito a San Francisco?

Hubert: No, sono arrivato qui 10 anni fa per il mio MBA a Berkeley e sono rimasto in seguito.

But I found a co-founder coincidentally at … How things start in life… I was a judge on this startup competition in Prague years ago, and I met Daniel there. Then when I started looking for a co-founder, I wasn’t sure where, location wise.

But I reached out to my next network and he said hey I’m looking for a new opportunity and I’d love to work with you on this. It started when I was still at GoodData and I posted on Facebook “a friend of mine is looking for a co-founder for his startup”. Kind of like secretly. That’s how it started. We started working together and it just went from there.

Daniel is now in Prague, and we travel back and forth. That’s how it’s set up.

Jeroen: You didn’t consciously choose the two locations of the company and then Boston neither. It just happened.

Hubert: Yeah, it’s just life.

Jeroen: Nice. Let’s start wrapping up. We’re almost at one hour.

Hubert: Forte.

Jeroen: What is the latest book you’ve read and why did you choose to read it?

Hubert: I’m reading multiple books, because some I read for enjoyment.

The book Mastery that I just mentioned. I’m almost done with it. I’m at the very end of it. And I really liked it. Again, I talked about it already, but it’s so inspirational to hear stories of people who really achieve mastery in their lives. And they really make things happen.

Di recente ho letto molti libri sulle vendite. Sulla mia scrivania ho la Formula di accelerazione delle vendite, che è la storia di come sono state costruite le vendite in HubSpot.

I listen to books. That’s what I like. When I go for a run. I run 5K three times a week, and I listen to audio books. Let me quickly pull up what’s there.

La Vendita con Sfida. La formula di accelerazione delle vendite di cui ho parlato. La vendita rotativa. Vendere o essere venduti. Ho letto tutti questi libri di vendita di recente.

I haven’t read “Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built”. I have this lined up to read.

Then I found this book Insanely Simple, which is the obsession that drives Apple’s success. I haven’t read. I’m definitely going to do that.

It’s mostly business books, but I try to sneak in some more. Sapiens: A Great History of Humankind. I had read that, that was awesome.

Jeroen: Sì, anch'io voglio ancora leggerlo.

Hubert: And design books. I bought this book. It’s another book that I have on my desk. It’s called “100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People”.

I decided that I’m going to read, now, for 20 days, five points every day. I’m going to get through it in 20 days. Let’s see how that goes. I literally bought it yesterday or two days ago.

Ascolto gli audiolibri a doppia velocità, o a una e mezza, o a una e tre quarti, per risparmiare tempo. Ho allenato il mio cervello a farlo. Mi piace molto.

Jeroen: C'è qualcosa che avresti voluto sapere quando hai iniziato?

Hubert: Oh, man, there’s so many things. It’s just…

Jeroen: Una cosa.

Hubert: Una cosa.

Jeroen: La prima cosa che mi viene in mente.

Hubert: I don’t know.

One thing that I’m still struggling with, when I’m hiring people, I always still judge people or I evaluate them… I think of them as myself.

Devo continuare a ricordare a me stesso che ruoli diversi hanno bisogno di persone diverse. So che questa è una specie di grande cosa.

I have three interviews after this call. I’m hiring even some very junior people right out of college. And I really need to remind myself what it was like when I was 23. Everything was new to me. Because I tend to treat everyone as equal and my expectation is that people know a lot and that they have a lot of experience already. I just need to keep reminding myself that it’s not the case and that people are different in that sense.

Mi chiedete la prima cosa che mi viene in mente. Proprio ora, in questo momento.

Jeroen: No, it’s good advice. Hiring is not an easy thing to do correctly.

Hubert: Sì.

Jeroen: In terms of advice: what’s the best piece of advice you ever got?

Hubert: I remember one piece of advice that I got: to constantly build networks and partner with people and just nurture relationships. That’s definitely something that’s paid off so much in my life.

I just mentioned that Daniel, my co-founder, I met him because I did this free thing. I’m going to go and judge a startup competition. And I stayed in touch with the people and that’s how it happens. Winston who is here with me building the company. We worked together at a previous company, and it’s been great and I stayed in touch. So just the value of “you never know what you’re going to do in the future”. And reaching out to people and staying in touch maturing their relationships being a good citizen.

That’s valuable and I would encourage everyone to do it and even more so if you’re young and starting.

It’s the value that your personal network will have for you in the future. It is so huge and you should nurture their relationships. You should even not only just focus on your discipline, on your narrow focus that you have, but even outside in different disciplines. It only creates value for you and gives you perspective.

Portate con voi le persone che apprezzate di più da un'azienda all'altra e da un team all'altro.

E anche le amicizie. Coltivare le amicizie.

Jeroen: Grazie per il consiglio! E per esserti unito a me al Founder Coffee.

Hubert: My pleasure. Thanks for doing this. This is awesome. I’m really looking forward to listening to the other interviews.

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